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 #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 #808 – READALONG: Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein

Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
1953, interested in the centaurs, get off my chest, read the juveniles in order, the first 6 are humanity’s juvenile guy in space, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, The Rolling Stones goes the farthest, Podkayne Of Mars, Starship Troopers, the themes are more adult, all about the parents, family, 18-19, Between Planets, takes the ring, Time For The Stars, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, all set in the solar system, The Star Beast, the Moon, intergalactic space, the 7th one, interstellar space, invents FTL for this story, assumes it, different tech, Time For The Stars, only asterix, pooping on these boring boy characters, he’s a hillybilly with a stepmom, stepstepdad, Sam thief/mentor, truck driver mentor, some other mentors in the ship, super-noticed, found it here, they get lost in the woods, always getting lost, gets people out, the hero boy gets the lost people out the bad situation, what happens in space, becomes the captain, very boy-wish fulfillment, astrogators, had to be the captain, annapolis, the math guys are in charge, memorized the logarithm charts, I could be captain, junior officer, I have the training I have the knowledge, a really really good book, when were they and how could they get back, a time warp, whoever wrote the dustjacket, Tunnel In The Sky, pleistocene, the girl, tomahawk effect, back on the farm, a fun conformity, he achieves these great things, it’s situational, still just a student, have your own colony, didn’t he prove his way, a field commission, Wesley has to go back to school, the main split Jesse has with Heinlein, reject the things that are bullshit, good value in corruption, the Sam character, gets martyred, the earth culture we got a very small peak of, guild heavy, Lester Del Rey’s Badge Of Infamy, leave the earth and go to mars, he likes that idea, meritocratic idea, a governing principle, the role guilds and unions had, most-scientific management, a fantasy of the good old days, workers could work their way up, showing the corruption, the truck driver, Sam stole his book, rejects the last meal, the diner, hops the fence, guy says fuck off, mouth watering, pride prevented it, help me cheat my union and the rules of the road, two drivers alternating, the first time that happens, other cheating earlier in the book, the same thing happens, below decks, known but allowed to happen, the stills, interesting relevant, the Baltimore harbour ship crash, the company has been cracking down on whistleblowers, drinking on duty, things are not being maintained, maintenance issues, report whistleblowing through the company, free ride plus meals, the teamsters union, aboard ship, the canny one, bribe your way through everything, how did you even learn all this, why were you rejected from the astrogator’s guild, if I ever become captain, I’m going to use that to change things in the guild, we can reform this, this whole society is corrupt, his inheritance is stolen, your half mom, pay his fines, his attitude towards the American project, when I was a navy man…, nod and wink, get your graft, an undercurrent, the flex you need to make any kind of institution work, a little bit of graft, slight tweaks,nothing can be perfect, benefits to this system, the economy seems to be going, alternative, the corruption goes all the way down, Max’s dad’s farm, 400 years, not allowed to sell it, the Agricultural Land Reserve, engaging with the idea earth is going to run out of places to grow food, making food scenes work, the big breakfast, huge American breakfast with a big stack of pancakes, the diner, bring me an egg, nail it to the wall, on the ship as well, kidnapped with the girl, high tea, a really good writer, its the same formula every time, circumstances, distinct enough, young male characters, pretty terrific, distinctive characteristics, Luke Burrage’s The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, Moby-Dick, what the book is saying, I’m Ishmael, riding over his shoulder, no personality, twins, transgender is in here again!, more than once in more than one way, spider puppy, I’m a boy, I’m a girl, misgendered, you bring out the mother in me, very refreshing, his prudishness is non-existence, all sex all the time, not being worried as being perceived as gay, freedom to tell stories, Butler, Missouri, guys who grey up on farms, time around animals, sidemeat, cook the eggs, he’s bringing real life experience, theoretical and very grokkable future vision, very famous science fiction writer, a solid solid book, lie and cheat, come clean, moralism, make sure you talk to your parents first before going to the moon, role models, his uncle is his role model, interacting with adults that are not your parents, the maturation process, you see the themes get more heavy, more adult, adults facing adult issues, slavery, a little sister, an inversion of Podkayne, the most popular of all of the YA, dad was an English teacher, the one he chose for his students, the babiest, Tunnel In The Sky is fairly adult, sex in there, hidden in the house on the honeymoon night, a boyfriend back home, a class dynamic, hypercompetent for a girl, 3D chess, pretending to be dumb, characterizing girls, the girl is more interesting, our viewpoint into this world, super-readable, Glory Road, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the mother thing, a little bit of Lovecraft in there, the Yest of the YAs, Rocket Ship Galileo, boys adventure, 1958, building spacesuits then, excited about building spacesuits, abducted by aliens, accessible Heinlein, the earth setting: terrific, the quasi-dystopia happening outside of the farm, the tunnel technology, slidewalks are mentioned, talks to a cop, runs into an alien or two, refrigerator, the electric stove is broken, wood shavings for tinder, a lot of the country didn’t have electricity, a woodstove is more work, plan your meals out a lot more, not having the dinner ready, sleeping around, a foreign unicycle in the driveway, self-stabilizing unicycles, 60kph, how did he carry that woman home, a second seat?, really great writer, the starship works great, matter converters, just does enough work, decks, gravity changes, turn off the gravity, Haven?, Charity?, the planet with the centaurs, we haven’t seen centaurs before, the Venusian fauns, panisci, elections, a marriage by the mayor, bio-tech, a trial, a judge, an old centaur, use an electrical eel on him, Max is trying to learn the language, being tied up outside with Elly a lot, a thread there, more about a first contact situation, the bad astrogator guy disposed of the note, the rebellion on the ship, Orphans Of The Sky, another repeated plot point, the mutiny, the same tricks, good revolution, overthrowing a corrupt government, Heinlein had a twin brother born in the UK, when they meet they’ll disagree about the same things, he believes in the American project, we need to be circumspect, justifying the house of lords, strawmans, his solution to problems, the stepstep dad is a nogoodnik, a layabout, a bad version of Sam, the astrogator who is bad at his job, missed the captain’s error, destroys the documents, an Iago for our hero, never fully grokked by Heinlein, never goes that extra step, allows them to be bad, why did Max’s father choose this woman as a wife?, Farmer in the sky, the father marries a wife, a new sister, son, something from Heinlein’s own experience?, a lot of feelings in there, let’s go join the navy, at a boarding school he gives up his horse?, Between Planets, has to give up a lot of stuff, drawing from his own life, having a pet that you can love a lot that you could talk to, back to back, huge American breakfast, gotta save Lummox, at the diner, bring me an egg, nail it to the wall, make him captain, high tea, toast, a really good writer, it’s the same formula every time, changes the circumstances slightly, young male characters, the first six are rough, young men are not that interesting, Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, Moby-Dick, I’m Ishmael, has no personality, the themes, twins, transgender is in here again, more than once in more than one way, the spider puppy, I’m a girl or I’m a boy, the talking pet, Willis, Lummox, misgendered, you bring out the mother in me, twice, separate scenes, prudishness, propriety, the editors holding him back, all sex all the time, not be worried about being perceived as gay, really interesting, allows a lot of freedom to tell stories, some issue with families, Butler, Missouri, grew up or are on farms, sidemeat, could be pig, sidemeat fat to cook the eggs in, real-life experience, grokkable future vision, very famous science fiction writer for a good fuckin reason, lie and cheat, maybe I need to come clean, moralism, Rocket Ship Galileo, make sure you talk to your parents about going to the moon, role models, interacting with adults who aren’t your parents, interacting with adults as equals, you would see the themes get more heavy, more adult, adults facing adult issues, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, an inversion of Podkayne, dad was an English teacher, the one he chose for his students, the babiest, Tunnel In The Sky is fairly adult, sex in there, honeymoon night, a cute shipboard romance with Eldreth, a class dynamic, hypercompetent for a girl, pretending to be dumb, characterizing girls, the girl is more interesting, winning a contest, Glory Road, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, an adult who is acting childish, the mother thing, a little bit of Lovecraft in there, the Y-est of the YAs, boys adventure, boys and girls can read it, building spacesuits then, the middle 60s, everybody is going to be excited about building spacesuits, accessible Heinlein, quasi-dystopia outside of the farm, the tunnel technology, slidewalks, stuck on the farm, checking out books from the library, a refrigerator, the electric stove is broken, wood shavings for tinder, a lot of the country didn’t have electricity, more work than turning that knob, not having had the dinner ready, gone for the night, sleepin around, he’s got a unicycle, unicycles are huge now (self stabilized unicycle), the laws don’t know what to do with them, stepstep-dad’s unicycle, spinning up visions of it, doesn’t need to wholly explain every piece of tech, matter converts, decks, gravity is working, turn of the gravity, Haven?, Charity?, Charity maybe, two legged fauns, Venusian panisci, Tunnel In The Sky, they find houses, elections, a marriage by the mayor, associated beings, bio tech, a trial, a judge, an old centaur, an electrical eel, a whole other book about that, Max is trying to learn the language, being tied up with Elly a lot, they play chess, could have gone off in another direction, put in a cage, the note is not found on him, disposed of the note, the rebellion on the ship, another repeat plot point, Red Planet has a little bit of that, good revolutions, mutiny, challenging the leadership on the ship, Heinlein’s twin brother born in the UK, interested in the same things, the American project, the British Heinlein would end up justifying the House of Lords, strawmans, set her cap for him, good cook, property, a bad version of Sam, an Iago for our hero, how did they get to be like that, why did Max’s father choose this woman, Farmer In The Sky, a lot of feelings in there, let’s go joining the navy, at a boarding school and he gives up his horse, Between Planets, drawing from his own life over and over again, a pet you can love and you can talk to, transgenderism, big breakfasts, parents losing a wife, incest was left out, later books, certain themes, Heinlein doing Heinlein, a great listen, the guild thing, science fiction stories with unions, Gentlemen Be Seated, positive portrayals of unions in science fiction, the fat union guy has to sit on his ass, a good union man, I’m getting paid to be here, a positive portrayal, a sense of government, some sort of agricultural land reserve, space tourism, farm animals, workers, six females on the ship, just the passengers, well aged, past point of normal fertility, the annoying passenger, in Red Planet too, being uncharitable, the authority of the captain and the rules, that Lester Del Rey boo, Badge Of Infamy, in our world, corporations and stockholder, United Fruit sends the Marines to Guatemala, the President signs off on it, American people aren’t doing that consciously, explanations come after, Heinlein’s really awesome, how to operate within the system, rebellions there, disentangle the premises from Campbell, with The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, its a prison, expand, as a juvenile, a transition out of that, Friday, the last great book?, harks bad to this era, not fully human, escape to the stars, all the problems that are going on post-break up of the United States, Heinlein’s my guy, I Will Fear No Evil, am I transgender?, what would it be like, am I doing a good job, what makes me not attracted to men?, rape, as you know we both being women, the big muscles that men do, there isn’t a mistake in it, these keep getting better, kind of amazing, is the peak?, becoming a better writer, more complex, of the official juveniles, which is the best?, Star Beast or Time For The Stars, a tier list, not one boy, Hazel steals the show, more comedic too, playful, the courtroom scene, a bad movie where everyone cheers at the end, a space opera about space opera writers, when he dumps the parent characters, on his own, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Starship Troopers is a poem, M.I., book recommendations, Skybeasts, engage with the centaurs, wanting to play with the babies, almost a shame, alien ecosystem, that lost in the woods subplot, is he just being lazy, what makes you a hero is saving people rather than killing people, bad writers, put a girl on the tracks, kill the villain who put the lady on the tracks, very moralistic, it’s about saving people, it’s about being truthful, a very boyscouty guy, shoe a horse, cook a meal, bring a woman’s pregnancy out into the world, conn a ship, combining the math is important, Jesse, is there a kid who doesn’t have to study math, one likes history, math is true and it helps you, the big gimme, Max Jones has an eidetic memory, its a trick, smart boy, doesn’t act arrogantly because of it, the doctor, you better act morally because you need to sleep at night, remembering details, acted badly, lied hurt people, being a psychologist, shame a twinge, a physical injury, not being cruel, cruel and mean, characters say things, Eldreth, even a girl like Eldreth, she’s dirty, he’s stinky, not being the prettiest but having a good brain, a cruel remark, engage with this at the Bifrost Lounge, Asgard, being cruel to people, being perceived as cruel, our Max character confesses at some point, Marilu Henner, I ordered the fish, how memories are formed, a system of forgetting that’s built in, a genetically useful thing, some people have that turned off, sitting under the stars looking up at space, he could navigate them home, get them out of the woods, he takes the time to look at the stars, this is actually a curse, allows him to become the captain of the ship, a more common human, he’s wrong about stuff, how does he solve the space problem, same way as in Gentleman Be Seated, sometimes you just have to sit around, he’s a wise man, they’re lying to themselves somehow, this is a man who taught Jesse a lot of stuff, a bunch of other things, setting artillery cannon calculations as your main thing, never was disabused of that, we have engineers, way too much math to students, most of us don’t actual need it, you need to learn Icelandic, a fine language, uncharitable for math, malthusian stuff, kind of implied, for calories, the torch ships, jump gates, weird FTL, very blinkered on where Earth can go, can’t imagine fertilizer, I use the government fertilizers, this land is played out, Heinlein’s using that to bootstrap the excuse, he likes to go to space, a lot of Earth stuff, science fiction set on earth vs. science fiction set on alien planets, basically Mars, there’s nothing there, it aint gonna happen, not with the tech we have, he can’t describe a whole ecosystem, floaters, subhumans, almost Jonathan Swift, expressionless faces, a solution or a plan, rooting for the centaurs, a settler colonial spaceship, you killed one of ours?, very in the news again, kidnapped, amazingly horrific videos, officially censored on most things, tiktok and twitter, even tiktok is censoring, not a foot stepped wrong, he’s our vehicle to get to where we need to go, could have worked harder on that, more than just lets again be lost in the woods, lost twice, a little subplot, after a certain point in the book its almost all dialogue, a lot of writers, the shape of a guy’s mustache, he has a cap, changes his shirt, rumpled looking, stuff that isn’t description of the colour of the deck plates, Heinlein just gets to it, 7 hours, Paul’s been nominated for a Hugo again, Hugo Nominees, the new novel, Ancillary Justice, alternate pronouns, an AI that had its consciousness downloaded into a robot, tea-ceremonies and head kicking, a big long series that shouldn’t exist, really good and nice and short, Ann Leckie, that premise from 11 years ago, 409 pages, double the length of this and the first in a series, that’s something else, it is set in space, some science fiction ideas, it has something to do with what you’re reading the books for, escape or uplift, in the fifties it was the pulps, cheap paperback novels, for better or for worse, there are good series, 200 pages, don’t describe the deckplates, what is the haircolour Ishmael, people who are interesting, a Stephen King guy, physical appearance, repetition, in Connie Willis as well, getting to the thing and getting out, studying ecology that’s Dune, this is something else, we can be done with stuff, get someone else’s take, complaining about a book series, Heinlein’s awesome, even when you’re disagreeing with him, spending the whole book joining the truck driver’s union, a little lesson in physics, the pressure on the metal roads, trucks vs. trains, Evan’s readthrough of Heinlein, lost in space, you’re not supposed to read this book back to back, go crazy with Elmore Leonard, eventually they get bad, big but under control, a lot of sex stuff, implied, a pretty solid first person narration story, a retelling, Dave (1993), Moon Over Parador (1988), House Of Cards, Double Star is barely science fiction, hypnosis, a down and out actor, a good actor, is there a difference between me and the guy I’m acting as, The Prince And The Pauper, swap clothes, Richard Dreyfus, Caviar Of His Excellency by Charles G. Booth, fictional south American president, dies of a heart attack, Sammy Davis, Jr., we get to see our Martians and water brothers, same Martians, a princess of Mars, a princess in this book, a magnate, her boyfriend, upperclass twit names, fun fun book, Evan shows up sometimes, gonna have Will, Easter, last minute facebook memes about Jesus, a day of transgender awareness, trynna get votes, Easter something, March 31, 2024, more woke holidays, eliminate the boring holidays, thanksgiving, created by the people, Halloween, opening day for baseball should be a holiday, Taiwan baseball, colonized by the Japanese, Sun Yat-sen, Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith, his godfather, kinda like Tolkien, same thing but for space, all the other wars he was involved in, not everybody is going to get this, a Chinese expert, pre-CIA CIA guys, on team China during WWII, there’s a really good documentary Cordwainer Smith, a Chinese name, largely about cats, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, humans fighting dragons in space with the assistance of the partners, they like fish, time spent talking about psychology of cats, Rediscovery: The Lives Of Cordwainer Smith, the national father, revere him, Taiwan has so been Taiwanized, 10/10, the 1911 revolution, 113, a lot of them aren’t aware of that, very science fictional, the statues everywhere, the propaganda letter bombs, to surrender properly, the tragedy of communist victory in the civil war, a guy who is deeply in love with China, uses his powers for evil, uses his powers to spin up stories for himself, stories about empathy, the dragon and the rat, what the dragons look like Chinese animals, very different, creatures of water, long and sinuous, not hoarders who need to be slain, harbingers of bad luck, before famines, space is painful, who come out of space, people I helped crush, really likes Beowulf, focus on that, meatgrinding, reduce this to US imperialism, British war, the China lobby, inform government policy, China was still struggling against imperialism, Henry Luce, raise money from the foreign exclaves, free China from western imperialism, so affectionate, wife was a Christian, soft power, American foreign policy towards China, you do your part, can’t be a good thing, why people write fiction is weird, art, therapy, money, Heinlein was good at it, it was fun for him, a failure at everything else, James Tiptree, Jr., not interested in having kids, not interested in going to conventions, intellectual exercise, using pseudonyms, don’t want to be in the limelight, not doing it because you’re trying to get rich, a hobby, they’re weirdos, how people’s brains work, some sort of deficit, they want to be famous, a little power fantasy, getting a job sucks, who makes it writing, very few, they’re delusional, small business, you give yourself a job you’re your own boss, we’re turning off in store business, that’ll kill it, working for someone else, bad ideas thrust upon you, make work, busy work, writing is a way to do that, escape an identity of being a job you don’t like, a big theme in The Sopranos, they’re having fun stealing things, crass miserable fucks, we enjoy their misery, the framing being about therapy, exposition, ultimately it is almost dropped, there for exposition, the backstory, panic attacks, the Game Of Thrones moments, throwing everybody under the bus, what makes it interesting, watching the decline of this lifestyle, cultures get eradicated, relentless narrative of decline, that incident with the bridge collapse, so on point, may take up to 10 years to rebuild this bridge, it was built in 5, how fast would China have a bridge up?, extracting value, the puppet strings, milk it properly, the competent government, when the government could actually do something, they did that war so efficiently, how many tanks were built, we’re running out of shells to give to Ukraine, we can’t do two genocides at once, the of pilots vs. the number of aircraft, they take 20 years to develop, the transfer of hardware manufacturing of tanks, 1950s cars, civilian aircraft, make civilian production, needs for housing, we can have a boom, for a long time, something goes wrong, do stuff without having to have a war, let’s do hospitals, how is this possible, not having graft being the number one thing they do, what the progress is on the Francis Scott Key Bridge [repair set to begin 2025], economic impact, a thicker base, more and more misallocated, investing way to much in housing, foreign investment housing problems, the houses empty in China, better that than tanks and bombs, when they get to 30 aircraft carriers, a land invasion of Canada, probably have some ideas, same with the regular federal government, we did really good on this, Heinlein influence, fleeing to space with your physics skills, even if a bad book.

art for STARMAN JONES by Allen Holub

Starman Jones - Interior art

Starman Jones - Del Rey

Starman Jones HARDCOVER dustjacket

Starman Jones HARDCOVER without dustjacket

Starman Jones - John Berkey cover art

NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY - Starman Jones

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #807 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith AND The Dragon-Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett

The SFFaudio Podcast #807 – The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith (read by Tony Addison, 38 minutes) AND The Dragon-Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett (read by Edmund Bloxam, 40 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Cordwainer Smith, Leigh Brackett, after Terence, before Terence, because the guy said it, which of these stories is worse than the other, one respect, more like the cinematic idea of science fiction, resolving the problems, back into the mainline of written science fiction, The Martian, engineering, conceptual all the time, higher level science fiction, it’s fantasy, engineering concepts, most of good science fiction takes place in the head, both definitions are current, a pretty picture, visually very interesting, characterization, near the worst, interesting psychological ideas, psychic cats see it as a rat, interesting setup, Instrumentalities, dystopia, neither was satisfying, formulaic and sad, sophistry, the French Foreign Legion on Jupiter, none of us using our right names, dismissed said Captain Smith, the story of the foreign legion, Alamo, Tex is in there, the first narrator, anxious about making choices, a LibriVox guy, Gregg Margarite, Phil Chenevert, Edmund Blocksam and Tony Addison, special effort, gives everybody an accent, most of them are from Venus or Mars, the Martian guys have a canal accent, extra effort, his correct interpretation of the text, that’s the French Foreign Legion, a 5 year stint, they give you ID, some French guys in there, mercenaries from other countries, safeharbour, practically a swipe from an adventure magazine, the Berber princess is a Jupiterian Queen, a fort they gotta defend from the Mexicans, every French foreign legion story, the Tex connection there, the North West frontier trope, red serge, driving a dog team, magazines like Adventure and Argosy, just French Foreign legion stories?, many movies of it too, a recent Netflix movie, [Siege of Jadotville], pyrrhic victory, a very sophisticated technique, but what did he say?, die for colonization, this is a really bad story, set on exotic planet, also titled Dragon Queen of Venus, isfdb.org, list of the changes, the Planet Stories version, Tex stirred uneasily, the heavily Jupiterian fog, the Venusian fog, Jupiter is a virgin planet, Venus is a virgin planet, 1941 Jupiter is a gas giant, not good at astronomy, a titillating queen of Jupiter/Venus, Earth and Mars are running out of food, lebensraum, lamest fucking excuse, Fort Washington, she’s bad at what she’s doing, the description of the lady on the dragon, she identifies with the native people, the heroes are the colonizers, kinda jerks, wins by luck, this thing with rust, taken with the images, we don’t get to know anything about the Dragon Queen Of Jupiter, maybe these horrible colonizers will be so entranced they’ll go over to this side, Jesse, why are you so stupid, there’s no time left for that, it just can’t happen here, wasn’t up to it, badly constructed, sometimes the oafs win, Alpha Centauri Or Die!, a fixup, native chick, there are these outposts, such a fuckin obvious lie, the reason we’re here colonizing Jupiter, the Indians on earth, kinda terrible, slow low pitch pablum, glimpse of a pretty girl on a dragon, hashtag sad, make the colonizers grotesque, sitting in a pot being boiled alive, something to this story, two reasons why this story sucks, ideology of this story is interesting, civilize these people by killing them, manifest destiny in space, a cultural document worth examining, mainstream American ideology 1941, really bad science fiction, the thing with the water coming out of your body, stupid, we can see that science fiction can be bad, saves this story, what’s extraordinary about it is that it’s a genre mismatch, some detachment, the government mandate of Mars/Earth, countries team up to extract from other countries, not self-reflective, there’s no pushback to the narrative, Hertford’s Jungles Of Jupiter, Alice In Wonderland, swamplands [of jupiter], animalcules, absorb all water vapour, dormant during the rainy season, attempting an ecosystem to explain dragons, a shoehorned idea, elsewhere as well, Spain has a foreign legion, an interesting but bad story, allowed, Jesse’s right again, a movie called The 7th Dawn (1964), the documentary on Cordwainer Smith, hagiographic, designed to serve a political agenda, a we love Cordwainer Smith movie, looking thin, his service during the Malayan Emergency, how many other movies are set during the Malayan Emergency, had they called it a war the insurance companies wouldn’t pay, rubber plantation guys are running Malaysia, WWII is over please fuck off, the British and Australians and Cordwainer Smith all get around and fucking around and finding out, heads cut off, text chat, The Rediscovery, local Malaysian girl, political satire, from a movie poster, this horror must end, holding human heads and hands, a very strange duck and a very strange bird, what if this!?, psychic powers, telepathy, Bester has a good book on it, John W. Campbell bullshit, ruminating on the relationships between humans and their partners, cats, everything is symbolic, what are the dragons, what are the cats?, they’re women, not even submerged, seas of rotting fish, different relationships with different cats, this entity out there, the enemy of people and cats, cats view rats as an enemy, viewing the enemy as a predator vs viewing the enemy as a prey, totally political, do some comparisons, why is he such a weird animal, another CIA person, ideas about womens’ place in the world, The Screwfly Solution, mens’ place in the world and vice versa, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, all about here, all about him, Tolkien’s all about Tolkien, cats, cats, the cat element, I can see why Will is attracted to Cordwainer Smith, he had 11 cats, telling himself, what he’s doing for a living, one of the incidents, help surrendering Chinese soldiers not be killed, a very nice story, what did he do during the Malaysian emergency, working for the bad guys, how much he loved the Chinese people, the tragedy, the word genocide, the Great Leap Forward, little tidbit, deep in his bones, his opposition to communism, without suffering in the world humans can’t strive, socialism will remove suffering, suffered a lot of physical trauma, the eye, always being sick, pull out his glass eye to punctuate his lectures, take Heinlein, Tolkien, science fiction in space, but not so much about science fiction as it is about human possibility, a sensitive writer who write about people and their ways, personal in so many ways, a European dragon, a Chinese dragons, in European mythology, they’re evil kings, they’re hoarders, dragons/rats have a monopoly on space, Orson Scott Card, a pocket version of Edner’s Game, certain cats in your house are telepathic, destroyed at will, dreams infected, understanding this very strange man, “my boat of institutions are bullying to only one side” a key to understand, soaked in that story, when does Ender’s Game exist as a book, why do people like it?, Starship Troopers exists, any adult person and what they’re response to war is, humans have been making a kind of mistake, what is your relationship to war?, turns it inward, personal experience of war rather than the philosophical relationship to war, how we ought to relate to the state, why I support the Vietnam War, Tolkien’s response to WWI, trynna dunk on me, guy thinks there are no good kinds, Aragorn, a guy who was a king who didn’t do a lot of bad stuff, the Romanoffs were really nice to their children, Cordwainer Smith liked his cats, Hitler had a dog, he liked his dog, Psychological Warfare, rationalize it to “I’m helping”, Sun Yat-sen, revered by nationalist and the communists, riven with European and American exploiters, Korea, there’s a genocide, that war of foreign aggression, seems small scale, that’s sophistry, propaganda is often sophistry, tricking, a fantasy of escape like Tolkien, but done via a mode of Starship Troopers, this guy was a freak who liked cats, Heinlein vibes, little girl and middle aged man, fighting in subspace, light explosions, everything is symbolic, the psyche, experience as a spook, Tolkien was in WWI, it isn’t “no more kings”, it’s retreat into the fantasy, an apolitical response to a political situation, political quietism, why Tolkien didn’t like Dune, what makes the Harkonnens bad is they’re too hasty, the Atredies are wise and kindly masters who wage Jihad, we can do better than this by leaving earth and going to a secondary world, Dungeons & Dragons wheelchairs, they had wheelchairs back in medieval times, why wouldn’t they use magic to cure disabilities, what’s fictional, what’s real, famous Leigh Brackett story about green aliens driving a car in the South, giving them, what’s the C word?, about humanity, that’s what Star Trek does really well, you know what it’s about, why Cordwainer Smith is never going to be a mainstream guy, making Paul the good guy at the end of Dune 2, liking Paul as a hero, Paul mopes around, who is Zendaya, Chani, how the Japanese get Cordwainer Smith, the anime where the cats are doing Game Of Rat And Dragon, they also like E.E. Doc Smith, one novel, The Skylark Of Space, a good series, space opera, whenever Scotty has a problem on the Enterprise he’s channelling, character continuation from book to book, they age approrpriately from book to book, what a series should do, inventing tech on the fly during space battles, Scotty’s role on Star Trek, finds a way to break the laws of physics, make this shit go lightspeed, slaps it on the dashboard, Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, Heinlein doing Doc Smith, unless Akira Kurosawa it is impenetrable, doing it in a science fiction setting, cats are a dead end, can’t have babies with the cat, can’t relate to women, quick beyond all dreams of speed, undemanding, women demand things, where can you find a woman or a man or a friend, compatible with you at the animal level, culture, a bit like the woman nurse at the end, big and strong and beautiful and proud, stroke a cat, it’ll let you know, sidle up to your wife, put my slippers on to sidle up silently, literally talking about cats, almost 55 years ago, can’t quite remember what’s in this, magical in Cordwainer Smith’s style, sharp scientific concepts, everything, perspectivism, the fans are slans theorem, the cats are part of the escape, it’s a dead end and not true, Lord Of The Rings is a dead end, Christians on the internet, Theoden the steward, wants to throw himself on the fire, Christian symbology in there, life lessons, a beautiful fantasy, a quote attributed to Robert E. Howard, ‘one day you people will hope for a man with a sword’, circumspect, a piece of art, he shows you it’s a dead end, the horror of loving something you can never possesses, love is a dead end, you can’t find that with other humans, animalicules, sveltness, can’t find it in a woman, castrating nobodies, a woman with a strong personality, willing to go into rut and the right time, speed and grace and whatever alogical components of emotion that can be honoured, people who don’t understand him, the intensity of the war, the battle, like a computer game, in the title, a haunting title, divided up, turned everything into game theory, a piece of art, not his last word, green and purple, and counted ships, pinlighting, I’m cranching right now, Tolkien and Herbert, the thumb for the Andromeda, the ring finger, the thumb of the other hand, lost as people realized, planoforming, flatted yourself down into two dimensions, like nothing much, a sore tooth, a painful flash of light around the eyes, sitting in the Fighting Room, ticking around inside his head, for a second or a year, loose in the up and out, pimples on his telepathic mind, somewhere in this outer space, Man had never encountered, the light of the suns, drawing on Lovecraft, a lot of physical pain always, why?, a guy who physically felt a lot of pain, pleasure in ideas, pleasure in cats, what is he escaping from?, a bad man, a bad lady, working for the bad people, making art, the culture of the CIA in the mid20th century, culturally very liberal, Jackson Pollock, they know they were wrong, art by escaping, rock music, I like it, Laurel Canyon and creep around there, that’s bad, to serve an agenda is bad, woke up in the morning and told themselves they were good, the beautiful art they were making, Tiptree, Jr., Philip K. Dick was very bad, reported them secretly to the FBI, the way H.P. Lovecraft was bad, the life of someone to their creation, you could imagine in his psyche, inside him from a very young age, and lots of other things, a concrete application, that’s the bad step, so called good, not automatically tainted, can work in either direction, we write what we know, we know things that we’ve never experienced, from previous lives, me from a long time ago, something he knows, mediates that through his experiences, mostly reading, travels to places, does things, writes what he knows, does it symbolically, he does know what war is, saw how bad it was, when Leigh Brackett writes about the French Foreign legion, dressing up in a costume, wearing a sword, from a result, a different plane of existence, he was in the game, so symbolic, disagreed with American idea, disagree with the American ideas, eventually disagree with it, what do makes you a bad person, not what you think, the means are bad, justifies, any other reckoning, if we’re trying to figure out why Cordwainer Smith was acting like a CIA man, an American who can help people, the same job, probably not getting paid for it in the normal fashion, agent for government, why it’s called the emergency rather than a war, its about finance, working for United Fruit, stockholders back in America, rubber plantation owners, why those heads are gettiing cut off, we gotta extract because we want our money, twists himself into knots, become enlighten, savages civilized, a lady who’s not as sophisticated, fun but it aint got any intellectual heft, much more like Frank Herbert than E.E. Doc Smith, the Lovecraft comparison, Space Lords, very dreamy, very weird, fascinating, nothing that’s hidden, he’s not explaining anything, her most vivid one, nothing but depth, nothing on the service, both have the word dragon in the title, relationships with women, what?!, more thoughts about that, written by a woman, the woman dragon queen as this sort of ideal of beauty and savage beauty on a pedestal, but she loses to the oafs, a ruse instead of her wild power, married twice, especially his second wife, the women that are shown are silly, sterotypes, they don’t understand that he’s risking his life, the cat is sort of what a real woman would be, so heavily symbolic it’s made unattainable, hence he needs to write more to get there, The Ballad Of Lost C’Mell, strawman a woman?, mythology and classical stories, Joan of Arc, what is this based on where does this come from, with regard to this one, you get in an airplane, a frail guy with a lot of pains, you travel, you pet your cat and then you do your business, ruminating on this, two people take a bus trip, focused vs. unfocused experience, four people do a podcast together, the words are recorded, no way to get inside the experience, capital I idea, say it a different way, the American Hypothesis, the ideology, the other hyponthesis beside it, sometimes you’re a cat, transitional space between me and my interlocutors, a fuzz and a blur, not even an I either, the neuralink patient to write a tweet, read books through neuralink, absorb books, possible, just another input output, getting by appeal or electric shock, absorb it linearly, captial S for solar system, they don’t hit punctuation, I read a book, you can’t see the font therefore you’re not reading it, might not be listening, reading is an active activity, hooked up to computer at a recieving end, how do you compose a tweet, go back and fix, different kind of fixes, always not capitalize i-s or beginning of sentences, fix mistakes, a little trick, leave of the e in the, what does reading meaning, somehow through their brain, in science fiction, brain uploads, The Matrix, I know how to do kung-fu, upload dreams, sell dreams, experiencing it linearly, two different, try to recite the plot of any particular doctor who serial, The Brain Of Morbius, that’s not writing not reading, remembering and reading it are not the same think, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale?, conflating memory and experience, replacing pages in my old paperback, don’t grok them, not the way you learn anything, you don’t own that word, get it into your brain in multiple ways, you don’t remember how to ski you learn how to see, reading with your fingers, using braille, hard to figure out what it actually is, before there was punctuation people were telling each other stories, the primary way people, every word has every meaning it sounds like, bad good guy, good good guy, Jorge Luis Borges, how great English is, such amazing vocab, Spanish is very simple, not as rich in poetry, a man who did his own translations, with an English in mind, he knew English really well, the best translation, pay too much money to renew the translation, Death And The Compass, The Zahir, The Rejected Sorcerer, The Babylonian Lottery, Funes The Memorious, amazing what we can find, he wrote a Lovecraft story, There Are More Things, The Book Of Sand, equally monstrous house, published in 1975, as an insult somehow, a work of hack or pulp, pulp art can be beautiful, what she’s done here is bad, him doing his own thing, a mode of science fiction, he’s very different, Philip K. Dick is more mainstream, a run of PKD movies, they took the concept, very different from the novel, Hollywood, doing a genocide over there, shitliberal mindset everywhere, take the best I can out of documentaries, distracted, they thought it did, casual racism, in this day and age?, people are best understood in their time, the CCP, multiple genocide, aka the government of have, they clearly have, where have they committed the genocide, show me the videos, look up Nakba, i did but there’s conflicting reports, not a handwritten bill, a paid for poster behind glass, you can see them on twitter, children burned alive, parents holding dead children, show me that video for anything that’s going on in eastern China, they have phones in China, some trumped up terrorism, aka CIA, knife attacks, pits full of dead people, a cultural genocide, didn’t we do that in north america, that’s not happening and it didn’t happen, uyghurs, search it up, it’s not like it’s hidden, is there video, buried with bulldozers, the people who are pushing that, anti-Chinese government, Epoch Times, falungong newspaper, a very good paper for news that’s not related to China, the exiled billionaire Chinese guy, one accusation at a time, important for Paul Linebarger, kick out the emperor, a patriotic thing, Sun Yat-Sen classical Chinese garden, a public park, stickers everywhere, lampposts, Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza, condo’s movie theater, that makes it true, an authentic thing, astroturf, when the Ukraine signs were up, wealthy people’s lawns, B.C. Ferries, establishment stuff, Canada’s sending weapons to Israel, Canada does what the States wants, a stern talking to, that’s what happened with the Truckers, threatening the American economy too, come to the table, sad an pathetic, Time Is The Simplest Time, another dragon, Midnight Pulp, very interesting, total propaganda, they did a Lord Of The Rings, The Tale Of Tsar Saltan (1967), the more political one, Ilya Muromets aka The Sword And The Dragon (1956), defending Kiev, Jesse loves the idea that Russia owns Kiev?, cinemascope, brown skinned people, both live action, romantic fairytale type, Camelot stories, knights, epic, technicolor romantic, Ivanhoe, the 1939 Robin Hood, Ray Harryhausen fantasy, a different culture, the propaganda in both of those, very nationalistic, regional, satellite states, tell that to Stalin (a Georgian), after the time of Stalin, Khrushchev, he’s not that good a guy as a king, he’s a Welsh king, any [Andrei] Tarkovsky, big Hollywood movies, Spartacus, the Michael Bay movies, the Navy and the Marines, the Army puts them in there, the Chinese military, hardware, helicopters and airplanes and trucks and ships, Come And See (1985), a stock character, courtly stories, Chinese knight stories, marshall stories, so young, also haven’t watch a lot of movies, Bylina and Bogatyr, Will do you love movies?, the tiktok generation, movies? that’s not really a thing, not liking tv shows, microphone being weird, who even watches tv?, movies can be art, something else, you actively participate in movies, this is a presentation, a new film, like we treat plays, mostly we don’t do anything about them, what is this, Shakespeare, community theater is for actors and family members, youngness, films are important, a medium you can see amazing things, there are some great films, a treat for you, a period where they’re obsessed with one thing, that’s the autism, girl in her early twenties, every single episode of Bewitched, Bell, Book And Candle (1985), Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, wait til he finds out Dr. Dre got his doctorate, everybody is dunking on him, not very creative then are they?, this sample came from here, this is called art, plagiarism, when they delete their tweets your jokes don’t have context, sheesh, looking for attention, he’s thirsty, didn’t do any original research, there was lawsuits about this decades ago, everything’s a remix, not new cultural idea, there’s no problem at all in putting together this comparison, we’re talking about it, the best way to get the write answer is to give the bad answer, Boyce Watkins, PhD – Wealth is Power, my friend Jonathan, the key to understanding propaganda, more like masturbatory purposes, is he gonna make a living from that?, he didn’t write all that much, Leigh Brackett is doing it for money, Black Amazon Of Mars, a richer text, individualist vs. settler colonialism, literally have settlers, Malaysia Emergency, money from these supervisors, control and extract from the land of Malaysia, Canada started off as the first kind, Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company, for secondary extraction, on a planet that’s already been colonized, faceless fruit company on Earth, she’s not really there for that, she’s much better at it in Black Amazon Of Mars, hacky but not total hackwork, The Halfling, furries in it, this sounds good, a novelette from 1943, she likes both fortresses and citadels, rats are not predators, Chinese mythology, suss out the meaning, magazine author renewals, but the other narrator, and other stories, hard to get people to do novelettes, quite long, hard to appreciate stories, the story about the furries, Citadel Of Lost Ages, 1950, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Virgil Finlay Thrilling Wonder, a version sold on ebay, Hertiage Auctions, interestingly composed cut and paste, layered, as a colour artist, very distinctive black & whites, his line work, Darkness, nothing else, painful to thus aroused, the secret of an icebound cave that holds the key to the future, last week is a long time ago, Test-Tube Frankenstein, a race memory story, the Palisades, a good ending, very solid, listen to this, My name is Fenway, he told the voice, Central Park in the morning after the rain, I need a project, the one listener who’s listening right now, Hi!, where he lived at the end, big action scene, cliffs that overlook the Hudson, gruesome, weird menace, shudder, an extremely rare book, Fred Olen Ray, b movie director, Hugh B. Cave, 1994, just woke up, edit an anthology, self-published, Attack Of The 60 foot Centerfold (1995), Mike Vendetti things, People Of The Dark, Fafhard and Grey Mouser stories, Corpseless Coffin, Silverberg, William Sambrot, The Door by David H. Keller, short non-fiction, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, How Can You Be Reading This?, a bunch, 2 is a good number, When The Banshee Calls by Wayne Rogers, emdash, gruesome crypt, weird bizarre menace, on the one hand, more guys, let’s do one Wayne Rogers, one new guy, Will can take responsibility today, the scales are balancing, Ed Earl Repp was Jesse’s mistake, some sort of provenance, just so happened to show up on LibriVox, complementary to it, out in five parts, another banshee story, banshees are interesting, screaming ladies from Ireland, banshee related, a Cinemax show, gun violence and sex, Elliott O’Donnell, nonfiction, an essay, what’s the opposite of weird menace, you get to save the girl from a fate worth than death she will be generous with her body, what the lady looks like, Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings, the table of contents, the Starzl for that one, when Terence isn’t here to confirm, good to pair, pulling the rug out from under him, not about fault, proper behavior, not at all, Terence is quite delightful, always honest, you shouldn’t trust, easier to coordinate when people are here, Time Is The Simplest Thing is a novel, Attitude by Hal Clement, 2 or 3 hours, Spicy stories?, turning Mike onto Spicy, Spicy-Adventure Stories, 30 Seconds by Robert Leslie Bellem, the art is awesome, art continues, a dull squishy plop, unyielding asphalt, Dr. Zarkov, Count Zaroff, Planet Of The Apes?, The Most Dangerous Game, The Unveiling by Alfred I. Tooke, puny and weak undernourished the Bolsheviks didn’t kill him, disturbing art, a retelling of [Pickman’s Model] with a different focus, perfectly fine, too cliche, Ravenoff, russian names in early 20th century pulp literature, look how beautiful Jesse’s PDF is, all the words are bolded, Jesse is awesome at this, The Black Thing Walks, The Brazen Bull, the table of contents page, a ghoul, a bunch of judges, very funny, lingers on the things, danger and sex, parapet, a lady lying on a divan while men fight, stabbed between the boobies, a lady stabbed in a pillow near her bed, a little drunken when he parked the car, the sinister old cottage, a lot of whipping, this one has racism, you love racism, I love racism, get the black thing off our minds, whispered loved words, the tender softness, to feel those breasts, her halter straps crushed against my heart, page 37, a grotesque shape blacker than night, sensationalist, turn to page 103, my sudden blow toppled, gun in his hand as he punches a cultist in the face, so good, great science fiction hidden inside a shudder pulp, an exploitation piece, strapped to the device, and she seems to be enjoying it, metal bars up and down her legs, a little more advanced before we read this one, pretty hardcore, Cannibal Holocaust (1980), a problem, becoming more boring because of it, curating stuff for people, there’s a lady in Port Moody, talking up her virtues, she needs a computer, buying cheap ThinkPads and fixing them, happy to help out a blind lady who’s deaf and can use it, a concern you should have, a parasocial relationship with my friend Will, a little bit of both, try not to overly concern myself with, the download numbers vs. being available, the business, an anti-businessman, the business of playing the business game, you shouldn’t play a rigged game, which games aren’t rigged, they don’t always start that way, the levers and tricks to running that game, becomes corrupted, be on the periphery, a gas station in a small town, towns don’t sustain, extract value, Facebook marketplace is the new Craigslist, in the selling business, the tutoring business, the strawman in The Strangest Secret Book by Earl Nightingale, the very first self-help, first spoken word record to go platinum, ran a sales floor, what’s the point of trying, ok if you are in certain industries, the laptop game, institutions pump and dump, our hero Mr. Pulpcovers, they sell businesses on a semi-regular schedules, recycling is a huge scam, reused/resold, the recycle sells those, stores like London Drugs, refurbished laptops, great profit possibility, the secondary market, if you’re in the right part of the scam, what do we mean by scam?, blue bin recycling, probably better off without it, generic everything else, put in a landfill, sort your recycling, clean your recycling, glass is often redone, maybe it is better, metal recycling, that whole industry is propped up by government mandate, it’s okay for us to consume, how deluded they are, they’re basically decorating the landfill with washed garbage, find ways to navigate it properly, not a scam at all, how do we know it is public domain?, what is the strangest secret?, the secret it every self-help scheme, pretend Will is an alien, no original ideas, this one stole the other one, [Rhonda Byrne’s] The Secret, pure lies, Jesse only really cares about public domain stuff, a tick, Jesse’s autism, 1966, 1970, gold record status, wouldn’t you, Brewster’s Millions, Some Like It Hot, for historical reasons, the idea everywhere, making a lifestyle about it, Jonathan just uses chat GPT to write all his tweets, investing emotional energy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, the narrator is very good, a ditzy blonde, March 16th, it would make a book, a whole row of encyclopediacs, my favourite recreation, besides think, he is in the senate, all a blank, it was a diary, too late to begin with January, the wholesale button profession, the button king, interested in educating me, see how my brains have improved, sounds very Jonathan, like a cartoon come to life, book some shows, a mere 3 hours 34 minutes, a professional lady, a pseudonym?, book us up, two shudder pulps, going to Pulpfest, doing research, near Pittsburgh, it’s fun, Mars, Pennsylvania, driving distance, not rich or anything, guy walked from Philadelphia to New York, I’ve got a train to catch (back to Philadelphia), walking distance, get a little cart, the rag and bone guy: “pulps and paperbacks”, not very well run, looking for authors to attend, modern pulp, listed as a guest, a weird coalition of people, all the disappointed people, new pulp authors, lots of indie authors there, the dealer’s room is the place to be, Philip Jose Farmer people, guess again, between 2 or 3 dollars, author copies, Scamazon, Elantris guy, used his leverage to get a slightly less worse deal, selling his digital product from their servers, close to 70%, a 70 – 30 split, a pretty horrible chiselling, Jeff Bezos’ gazelle strategy, kill the weakest ones in the herd first, the only publisher, that’s the actions that have happened, the FCC lawsuit against Amazon, required testimony, that’d be the place, let’s go democratize the middle east!, undemocratized publishing, the history behind it, the reality behind it, the only game left in town, exclusivity, a sweeter deal, pay to play, Godless, one guy in Los Angeles, most of Jonathan’s book sales, that’s where the people are, Google is closing their podcasting system, itunes was the directory, also-rans, all gone now, big competitors like Spotify, directing everything to YouTube, a gambit, sucked a bunch of people in and now being redirected to YouTube, not going to get the downloads, not getting scammed, just as long as you know the game is rigged, I’m gonna make money by doing this gambling, what about your losses, gambling is not a good way to make money, invest in a casino, not the same thing, u know you’re getting fucked, a nice salad bar, spend money, a scanner, Firestick is pretty good right now, other than scanners, they’re 12 bucks, laziness, in small towns people have really good thrift shops, Goodwill, what’s destroying thrift shops, fast fashion, flippers, Crocs?, the companies do that too, flippers, massive extraction, too expensive to ship, an amazon link to one, money or attention, moral quirks, stopped buying books from Amazon, Uline (packing material company), they sell everything, massive catalogue, everything you could ever want for shipping, used bookstores, Half-Price Books, the smart move, in the industry for shipping, everything you could have in a warehouse, phone book sized colour catalogue, what’s changed in the tech, an affection to warehouse, things that are small, massive storage at a very cheap rate, a huge covered area, protected from rain, if we were really serious about the homeless crisis, why it’s not being done, the unhoused, as a temporary measure, we do not choose to use them, a great technology, you can put everything that you need to, big building, protected from water damage, retain heat, against the wind, a tech, a space or something, were invented, a cave, slabbers, living elements of culture, representative art copies, not a good medium for it, very few copies for preservation purposes, in case the warehouse leaks, both good and bad, evil but without watermarks, a lot of things are evil, what is something in the world that’s evil other than Jesse, confusing good and bad with good and evil, a bad movie vs. an evil movie, Birth Of A Nation (1935)?, evil intention, a distinction there, Bill Gates evil, Trump very very bad, murders and rapists, people make mistakes, words are dangerous, do hate liberals, do enjoy his jokes, grade on a curve, very unevil compared to most, on the evil curve, a sharp distinction, very useful, something that’s evil in the world, other than Trump or Jesse, almost the opposite of evil, bad to call things good, other things are bad in comparison, payday loans are evil, usury is evil, flipping real estate, the way a lot people make their living, it’s been encouraged, talking about how to make money, a small business owner that doesn’t make any money, capital is very important, you need to have pencil crayons, people breaking pencil crayons, coloured pencils, colouring pencil, cultural difference, Laurentien pencil crayons, used packs, $50, $60, the shit that comes from China, some decent ones, a tool for making art, making beautiful art in the world, you lose your capital, capital is absolutely needed, stuff to get started doing things, factories, artisanal manufacture, mass production pencil crayons, scanned and printed, see them cheaply, makes people’s lives as they should be: easy, relaxing and fun, going on hikes, hiking away from a bomb zone or a forest fire, we should encourage forest fires at some points, be smart, how the rain can damage things, printing press, quality control, we have solutions to these things, a mimeograph machine, quite stinky?, technology in the 1930s, making t-shirts, printing up leaflets or comics, coulda bin a printer, should be an insult in Canada, the Laurentian elite, $249 pencil crayons, a nice consistent colour, now $80, overvalue things, the old fashioned way (digital), not a young man, patterns in children, everything gets broken, everything is disposable kids, rich kids, sew it back together, non-care, short term thinking, not thinking about capital as capital, $1.50 a book, sell for $9, when Jesse is the government there will be fewer laws, a vague haze, the withering away of the state, thinking Biden’s not withering, Whosit? [board game], guess who they are, are you in a blue room, are you smoking?, do you have a hat or a helmet?, doing it with Jesse sensibilities, NPC, the guy from twitter, Wojack, Santa Claus, Robin Hood, jokers, the copium one, Pepe, the dog in the little room, is your room on fire?, the this is fine dog, are you taking copium?, a cannula, genocide in China, why do people say it?, it’s repeated, actual genocide happening in Gaza, not on Facebook (Jesse assumes), way more people in the streets upset, fake outrage, Facebook ads, American Israeli, students suing Harvard for anti-Israeli sentiments, the Gay lady, trying to hold firm, President Gay, the amazing cope, whatever the rage of the day, almost a noble stance, exposed as a fraud, plagiarizing other people’s works, as opposed to remixing, dissertation have any value?, breathing mask, make a game, uncancelled, parents could get mad, they’re lucky they’ve got me, a little too desperate, waiting to meet people, high turnover, “I am the business, 2006?, 2016?, Jesse’s the capital, the sports team with the mascot, put in some hours, the book keeping, the recruiting or the sweeping up, the reliable standard, the business would die, grade on a curve, very low level, too old makes it hard, your country, education system in Korea is superfucked up, politically fucked up, bad systems, fleeing from it, sending or bringing their kids, the genocide of the Korean people done by the U.N., not even a topic, Jimmy Dore says Americans are the most propagandized people on earth, know the score a little better, PUBG, people in China and Africa, all over the states, a serious marijuana problem, fill bowl, retired guys filling bowls with cereal all day, made me paranoid, playing with randos, not always legal everywhere, a marinjuana store, buy it from the official government store, BC Cannabis Store, bizzare an appropriate, 18 games, no dinners, “carry me”, a squad based game, interactions with humans, some people are very good at getting dinners, this guy can carry us, he’s going to bring us to a dinner, makes good plays, by avoiding fights, you expend fake capital, expend your life, it makes noise when you shoot a gun, “third partied”, don’t take any fights you don’t have to, a good strategy for live, wise Kung Fu guy, the blind guy stealing a pea, a pebble, got better at having eastern philosophy, doing research, raised in China, that’s fine, hung himself in a closet, photos or it didn’t happen, Robert Carradine, died in Bangkok, Death Race 2000 (1975), a satire, Cannonball Run style, clicking on death, Thai police, autoerotic asphyxiation, disputed discuss, the scoop on the Clinton Crime Family, he knew who murdered Seth Rich, not taking the official line on Jeffrey Epstein, not knowing is not evil, flipping books, ripping off old people for their collectibles, a pawn shop, are pawn shops evil?, superior to payday loaning, give up things they could give up, old people who have big collections of shit they’re trying to get rid of, a big pile of old junk, take it to the dump, try to sell it, a mugs game, try not to lose money at it, a meticulous spreadsheet, a premium on curated books, a humbling experience, to break the spine of an old book, it’s like killing something, you every part of the animal, food that will feed forever, a bad outweighed by great good, going hunting, the right part of the world for it, it will change you and make you wiser, usually with fish, with mammals, they want to get it done, not having the time, people who took time, don’t worry about it I’ll do it, take a paperback, start tearing it apart, to lovingly preserve it, take the cover off, how traumatic it is, as a guy who loves books, change your relationship with the books, the words and the pictures rather than the object itself, a treasure that gives forever, the guy who did it loved what he was doing, trying to preserve the art, along the same lines, a hoard of treasure, that is a good, destroying books that are never going to be read again, obvious evils in the world, not operating in the world, deaf and a bad lip reader, very long text messages, what a great deal she was getting on her printer, the printer subscription service is a fucking scam, she doesn’t have a car, she’s blind and deaf, having it delivered is a great good, busy doing her degree, telling the mechanic what a good car your are, printers soon, shipping label printer, Louis Rossmann is a good man, a businessman who wants to share how he’s been successful, liking music, oh my, teeth and hands are dangerous, not to animals, generally, lyrics are very dangerous, go to the post office, Pirate Ship (postal service), little piece of wisdom, the Wisdom Podcast, all profits are temporary, Raincoast Books published Harry Potter, better, different, big demand, by the tonload, non-book store buying a lot of books, Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker, competitors, fucks around with the algorithm, things start going bad, lot of physical objects, way cheaper than regular mail, a good policy decision, production of printed goods, shipping water through the mail, live animals through the mail, small animals, chicks, can I ship live chicks through the mail?, yup, Canada Post, isn’t that interesting, something like a retailer, an online retailer, in 6 months, “send will twitter public to see if twitter still exists how his book business is doing”, wow this is great!, exhausted all the topics, pretty good, very good.

The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith

Dragon Queen Of Jupiter - Virgil Finlay cover

Dragon Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #801 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

The SFFaudio Podcast #801 – Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey, read by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (5 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
autobiographical book, exactly why Jesse first put the video together, Gay and somebody else, Larence Chaves and Zenna Gay, most popular youtube video, a little more time cleaning it up, putting it together, enchanted by Martin Geeson’s narration, a link to the post in 2012, mentioned in The Crawling Chaos by H.P. Lovecraft, Martin Geeson, the narrator, thou hast the keys of paradise, temporal digression, immense sophistication, a great appeal, nervous?, post-modern, self-awareness, to fix his own identity, aa large part of the whole, lucrative piece of sensational, the London Magazine, majestic neo-classical style, self-reflexive but always reaching out to the reader, a good summary?, a style of the post-enlightenment style, Ada Palmer’s tetrology, Terra Ignota, the theme is romantic, the underlying philosophical basis is the German idealism that served as the basis, Shelling, Ficte, reading German romantics or philosophers, a mixed type of style, a transistion, the enlightenment, reason, romantic exploration of the unconscious, dreams visions, a rational study, its a drug book, brain juice, opium derived products, seen Trainspotting (1996), alcohol is a good counterexample, harmful, a poison, some people buy it so they can kill themselves, the pharmacon, the circumstances and the dosage, quite deliberately, explore the power of the imagination, taking it over, poisoning, he’s had some pain, lived to 76, not dying from it, the movement in English around AIDS, the beginning of the 80s, first person knowledge of diseases, medical treatments, doing your own research, having a cooperative dialogue, reading, all the academic experts, trash, he knows far more about it than they do, doctors recommend drugs, sometimes paid to push them, the authority to prescribe them, inhibitors, I’ve heard you should build a house, keeping your clothes from getting wet, authority on a hill, wisdom in the people who are supposedly untutored, doesn’t have massive contempt for everybody who is not reading ancient Greek, turbaned guy, traveling through Wales with no English and no Welsh, a massive dose of opium, would have killed any set of dragoons and their horses, an abiding wisdom, Cora was feeling ill, Jonathan not liking the narration, not abridged and the narrator is awesome, an expanded version from 1856, a large scale revision of the confessions, personal background, a much weaker beginning, digressions and inconsistencies, a citation, spoiled his masterpiece, vigor and tension, tired prosiness, random critics, raw power that makes a book exciting, H.P. Lovecraft, wrongly biased, the drug experiences, a quarter and a third of the text, I want to get to the drugs, the accumulation, meditations, classical literature, philosophy, conversations with poets, the wider experience was just as much the opium, what is the real opium for him, the brain, tea, loves his tea, tea houses, consternation about the taking of tea, coffee houses were politically dangerous, need to be primed to access a sublime experience, for some people they claim it intoxicates people, it elevates him, nodding on a pile of laundry, walking the streets and talking to people, a mind expansion not an intoxication, this is not the abridged version this is the original version, a charge responded to by de Quincey, I’m not a fictional person this is a true story, changed some names, collapsed some stuff, this is a memoir, there’s a lot of truth, not a lot of pooping scenes, how many times I was unable to poop, a big problem for people who take opium, this book is not abridged [Jonanthan did not say the audiobook was abridged, rather he suggested it was the expanded revised version], there are people who dislike Martin Geeson’s narration, 100% perfect, the voice the accent the tone, became Thomas De Quincey, brilliant solution to a serious problem in audiobooks, leaving names out, first initial then blank, enhances this idea this is a true story, Lord blank, the Dean of blank, did something, as if it was written to aural, translate text into a beautiful audiobook, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, @kins, what you do with children, this is the way we do it, Jesse is a purist, a serious problem, the writer elided the name, the writer wrote p and a bunch of underscores, confronted with this issue, the reader is going to get a false impression of what the text says, he’s hiding the names, that’s awesome, like someone who’s talking, something in Surrey, if other people were here, if Paul was here, spending time with a little girl a lot, one who takes care of his food, snuggling with a little girl in an empty apartment, this is creepy right?, with Anna, sensual desire or comportment, he loved her but not in that way, she was a prostitute, was he a punk?, never hints at it, in the cottage with just one girl, he doesn’t hint, she’s a servant, I didn’t have any carnal desires, more modern, today modern, chaperone, he’s a bohemian guy, an aristocrat in their eyes, the sons of cardinals, he attacks his fellow gentlemen, sons of high priests in the Anglican church, the slightest slight, Jane Austen, become an Anglican minister, hustling, dwindling prospects, whether they like it or not, state sanctioned, like being a justice of the peace, high in a governmental bureaucracy, a weird parallel, an angry hobby horse, mostly about being a homless guy with a weird brain grokking a lot of poor people, early that 1821, late 1790s?, pre-Victorian prostitutes, a respectable publication, the magazine people go to to see what’s going on, confessions, novel and strange, more people than you can possibly imagine, because they’re poor and alcohol costs too much, a political economy, to stupify themselves, laudanum a mix of alcohol and opium, opium grains, a big last fling, mind expansion without the addiction, Winfred V. Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft, Les Paradis Artificiels by Charles Baudelaire, obscure realms, intimate the nature, drawn back into Asia, vast age of race and name, strange memories, there’s two called The Crawling Chaos, a dream that Winifred Jackson had (and Lovecraft improved), analyze the imagery, of the body, a fantastic thing, caffeine, enhance what’s already going on in your brain, practicing meditation, the mood organ from the opening of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, The Electric Ant, see reality differently, I’ve got access to stuff, there’s some pains, I’m an addict, sometimes making my life worse, orphans, living on blackberries and rosehips, addicted to cheap drugs, not feeling the pain, literally being cold, superfun and interesting, The Philosophy Of Furniture, he describes the perfect room, the curtains, the table, what you should have at hand, 17×27 with a 7 foot ceiling, of course there’s a fire, an ever refreshing teapot, a woman who can pour it for you, look at her arms, a genre of youtube video, the cable TV channels, empty cable channel, the fireplace channel, a crackling fire, a costume of rings and a sweater, pokes the fire unneededly, being in a fire in a cozy room, AI of a cozy cafe, want it but can’t have it, rain pattering on windows, I get there through drugs, youtube is a drug, stream into your brain a series of things that you want, a really good book, many many insights, true insights about drugs, and the drug trips themselves, waking dreams, eyes and ears and mouth and relations, a quote, being a sequel to Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, the introductory notice, the object of that work was to reveal something of human dreams, supposed to lurk, dream of oxen, yokes so vast a majority, without much elevation of thought, the reproductive faculty of dreaming, being a philosopher, I was always a philosopher, a Kantian idea, space and time, other categories of experience, if you’re forced, hardened and reduced brain, reductive experience, speak Greek as a kind, met the poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, a romantic, this appended thing, the third part out, maybe I’m still addicted, of course the aim of the book was to warn people, it’s the silver key, the master key, a brilliant connection between Poe and Lovecraft and Dunsany, a teetotaler, but he is a great and profound dreamer, find a place to start, Will’s dream, Sylvester Stallone wanting to deputize a little girl in a quest for revenge, a big sheet of butcher paper, late dog, a 20 pound cockatoo, cockatzu, flannel pajama pants, chameloen like ability, stripped her, skinny white communists, markedly skinnier and more erudite, a man with a mustache, William Peter, self-conscious about this mistake, a double decker van food truck, remained obscure, a strong interest in underground music, what I’m hearing is it is time to start growing a mustache, cockatzu (Cocker Spaniel Shih Tzu Mix), designer dog, are dogs brain juice?, they interact with brain juice, wiggle waggle, if dogs had hands they would be touching you in places that would be impolite in public, as probably people do, northern europeans not so handsy, Mediterraneans are more handsy, without their consent, the lick us, Roog by Philip K. Dick, humans have more mouths than dogs, the mouth is something else, correction with your mouth, that’s the sort of thing, that little girl who is being neglected by the owner of that house?, a servant, not fed well, an expose, promoting something that is dangerous, we don’t even think you’re real, the child who has no home, heart of gold, a good value of this book, a rich guy suddenly poor, aka Lovecraft, aka Poe, magically poor and rich, better than all of you secretly, want a connection, not being particularly pretty or intelligent, sharing warmth, standard for marriage in 1790, an insight into it, seems creepy, seems heartfelt and touching, inappropriate, where is anybody trying taking care of this kid?, child labour as well, the political economy aspect again, class, before Marx, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, lacing the book, a social commentary, an aristocratic experience, the first book in the literature of addiction, on the wild side, on the night side, Aldous Huxley, The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell, mescaline, refined experience, refined gentleman, abject, petty or major theft to feed his habit, striding two worlds, his family life, majestic visions that become horrible, a Lovecraftian feel to the visions, his children, he cries, the transition is too great for him, he has to ween himself from opium, the turning point, the good effects without the side effects, your brain squeezes you out some brain juice, squeeze more, brain drugs from the outside, the conscious part says I disagree, serotonin is generated in the gut, a weight loss drug that paralyzes your guts, causing suicides, a take it for the rest of your life drug not a one time, Adam Smith, somebody from that early period, grokked Ricardo, Thomas De Quincey as a philosopher, I’d like to be buried in a nice country churchyard, use my body for science, he’s making fun, the aim of my book, in the appendix, the reason people hate drug books and drug writers, talking about real effects, parents, churches, but why?, support, control, looking out for them?, connect them with other people, They Live (1988), [Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson] something in the water?, a Philip K. Dick story as well, one of six different aliens, drug talk, Travels by Michael Crichton, auras, borderlands of perception, correspond to each other, see Hillary Clinton on the stage and say “contemptible monster”, or “my hero”, a delightful conversationalist, very real, real real good writing, what it was like to be him, defender of the empire, not against slavery, not homeless walking the streets, have his tea everyday, distanced from it, a great rockstar and kind of an asshole, Mel Gibson, you can be both, people were correct about it, some of the comments from youtube, 42k views, from 11 years ago, the best narrator I have ever heard, positively fantastic, agree wholeheartedly, bitching about, complex sentences to have savoured, recovered from heroin, most underrated piece of literature ever created, more intelligent than people give it credit for, influence in France, must have influenced [Arthur] Rimbaud, systematic derangement of all the senses, surrealists, if it really was a philosophical book, a street philosopher, show us the power of dreams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet comes closer to truth than the intoxicated one, Henry Miller, drunk on pure water, the aim is to get similar access to the power of dream and imagination without the drug that brings bad side effects and slavery, sometimes that’s the goal, an ad for inner voyages given to you by opium, hashish, coffee, water, just dreaming, meditate, altered state, control and access, when you are awake, lead to exploring the drug avenue, not the ultimate conclusion, underplay the other thing, he’s in a lot of pain, waiting there like an angel, he doesn’t curse the day, he blesses the day, his pain is physical and mental, triggers his first contact, the death of Wordsworth’s 4 year old daughter, psychosomatic illnesses and medicines, opiates today, treatment of pain, the drug literature, when you are pain it is hard to relax to listen to creative thoughts that are constantly generating, focused on the road, feet on the pedals, what you said, when you are asleep, that part is turned off, what you can feel is the generation of information, suddenly wake up, that stuff is going on all the time under the surface, taking away the pains that cause an inability, get into writing a story, where does it come from, the fingers allow access, creative control, the majority of people talking about how to write, listen to your brain, this is a formula, completely wrong, drug yourself up on opium, the chair under your butt, get that typewriter out, the inner psychedelic experience, Jesse’s advice, the best narrator ever, after the second hour, something completely wrong on the intonation, understanding what he’s reading, my mum came into the room, what’s wrong with this guy, a tinsey winsey concerned about spitting out his denture, snobbish seeming British accent, his mouth is constipated from the opium, the autobiographical main character, the ideal time, precious, high diction, dwelling on the words, savouring the vocabulary, not a note off, great from the beginning, they have to get used to it, having had this conversation via DMs with Jonathan, he couldn’t tell the narrator was an ai, they stop at the wrong places, a good narrator performs the text, when to dwell and savour, an amazing skill, Scott Miller (Lost Sci-Fi Podcast) can perform it beautifully, this guy’s kinda cool, a straight narrator, just doing a straight reading, where he dwells on words it is confessional, closer to the mic, not broad, it is precise and controlled, emotional, but not insane, another narrator, people wanted to read this book, a striking strange cleavage, a very fascinating thing, perception, that’s the connection, what’s different?, the perception, stuffed shirt aspect, that’s De Quincey, Sylvester Stallone could do it betta, harmony with the narrative voice, one objection, the digressions, I’m in a hurry to get to the drugs, a bildungsroman on the education of a philosopher, a line from Milton, anti-drugs, LDS, Mormons, coffee, against opium too, corner store Starbucks, don’t listen to the demons within you, we gotta control what those people smoke, this guy is wild, not coming from the scripture it is coming from within, perceiving reality differently, approaching some drugs in the wrong way, don’t have a bad trip, the brain is the ultimate well regulated drug factory, a way to get to it, ampther really great way, read some Lovecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Homer, the land of the Lotus Eaters, the drugs are dangerous section, drugs in The Odyssey, wonderful stuff, 200 years later, the last paragraph, ends abruptly, one memorial of my former condition, not yet perfectly calm, the legions are drawing off, tumultuous, the gates of paradise, dreadful faces thronged and firey arms, expelled from paradise, the angels guarding the entrance, the implication, an artificial paradise, as opposed to the one in the sky?, an earthly paradise, conversation with the students, I’m Christian, in my father’s house there are many mansions, what is a metaphor?, or there’s room for you?, when Jesus responds this way, he’d never thought about it before, the person in the pew, take in the information, take the received idea and take it into them, engaging with the idea is why it is a metaphor, why it is a good book, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, the person reading it to you, now what do you think about that, they don’t have the podcast afterwards, by the way you’re very sinful, weird religious cult in Russia, cut off penises and boobs, the fruit of sin, a solution, you should have read the book a little better, literal minded, the juice factory in their brain, we gotta engage with this stuff, not going to talk about it, make note of the pains of opium, even before the appendix, he’s not warning people, potheads, smoke for 40 years, head clouded all the time, not an immoral or moral choice, shouldn’t be illegal, dealt with in the same way that gin was, useful at getting at something, offer access to materials otherwise inaccessible, an old book about an old time, what the streets of London were like, what rural Wales was like, not a complete survey, not a lot of aliens beaming in, a note on the influence, The Man With The Twisted Lip by Arthur Conan Doyle, turns that into a character, of the famous Sherlock Holmes story, a non-homeless man pretends to be homeless, murders himself, a professional beggar, a little bit like Kim by Rudyard Kipling or Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, interpretation, what makes a beggar a beggar, a smart dumb guy, knighthood for propaganda, reading old literature makes you smart and dumb, ends on Milton, all this stuff in the poets I read are my experiences, why they are so powerful, the very Platonic thing, kicked out of Paradise, permeated by classical culture, all of literature is mine, he is a philosopher, Kant, an experimental philosopher, stops at the ancient asian civilization, in The Call Of Cthulhu, vastly further back, a grandiose claim, and he did, no progress in literature, whatever progress is, what Newton said about himself, If I have seen further, I stand on the shoulders of giants and I went further, dying of stomach cancer, probably finally became the transcendent guy by opium, August Derleth took a dream written down and called it a story, stories have to have shape, every part needs to fit, oftentimes they don’t transitions too strangely, layers and layers of dreams does not make a good fiction story, how strange, a ten hour video of a [near] still image, don’t have your drug experience interrupted by ads, C.M. Kornbluth, Gravy Planet aka The Space Merchants, cocoa and stimulants, time travel, quaint, looking back at ht oppressive heavy advertising seems quaint, well presented in Blade Runner, Atari, TDK, Japanese lady putting a pill in her mouth, advertising horror, a senator from Coca-Cola, ads are the worst thing ever because they interrupt, injecting you with a drug, defend against ads with adblockers, what is worrisome about Netflix and Amazon, now that we are captive audiences, latest solution, on the tail end of this podcast, Tiny [Windows] 11, a very stripped down version of Windows 11, install a website as an app Brave browser, watching Tubi or YouTube ad free, a bulletproof shirt, armour to prevent you from being injected with random drugs from corporations, the corporate government, fuck you I’m not taking your injections, when the X-Files came back, super-intrusive product placement, almost hit a homeless person, the car logo, nothing to do with the story, that’s really intrusive, corporate broadcast television, now skippable product placement, skipping interaction requests, skips the intros and outros and product placement, a blip on the screen, the resistance to the horror of injected ads into you, this is that at, Smart Tube Beta, works on android TV and Firestick, through github, a google OS for your TV, hook up a computer to a TV, go back to torrenting everything, most people will take the drugs, only drugs that expand my perception, a bit of a leap, a product placement for a product of Terence’s thought, indirectly the source of Marx’s sentence: religion is the opium of the people, Zizek: opium is the religion of the people, mind expanding stuff of (culture dreams) religion, Foundation, an opium equivalent, dumbed down, Paradise Lost to imaginal realms, where can I download that, wrote essays about advertizing in highschool, Youtube banned the Brave browser ad, advertizing for bitcoin, mine vs. buy bitcoin, advertizing is incredibly powerful, a megaphone yelling at you, it’s just a minute, you’re the one who is drugged, my friend, turn off the adblockers, got through, three more times and we’ll cut access, people put up with this, maybe 1%, ublock origin, update itself all the time, saw the real world of the majority of users, a horror show, they’re used to it, they think it is normal, wait til that skip button goes, our job as human beings is advertizing, the water is fresh, the blackerries there, what humans do, copy information from their brain to their mouths, hijacked by corporations, really important, most people don’t see it that way, people who don’t not obsessed with not being injected with this shit, being dosed on opiates all the time, The Seventh, ok.ru, stars Jim Brown, in a renaissance for easily accessible film, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland, we did it, we did a good book, wanted to do more, record Suspiria, too much time involved, audio translations of a Zizek book, exists in Italian, wanted to do more, the addictive aspect, more influence?, all these poets read both books and thought of them together, the horror genre, might mean he’s died, sections for collaborative works, Oscar Wilde, His Life And Confessions, complete solos, a biography, see what his taste is, narrators not being commercial, they get to choose what they want to do, they bring their interest to it, philosophical and artistic not commercial, none of them say: be an artist, probably not going to write a good book, otium, leisure, refined sense, just hanging around, aristocratic notion, you don’t work according to orders, a latin word, otiose, lazy, useless, digressions, self-realization, creation aspect of leisure, why LibriVox is great, share and be appreciative, argue Jonathan into Bel Ami by Guy De Maupassant, homeopathy, Milton, Brontes, Sophoclese, an LGB, before they invented the ts and the pluses, Alexander Pope, Ivan Turgenev, D.H. Lawrence, The Confessions by Rousseau, 17 hours of the six volumes, The Soul Of Man by Oscar Wilde, a cool dude, writes nice introductions, rhapsodic, joyful anarchic hedonism, a map of the world, Humanity, Wilde wittly assails, life denying ascetics, venal popular journalists, that sounds like a good book, a mere two hours, booking it, what is a black pill and how do I take it?, means nihilist, white pilled, everything is good?, pink pills, yellow pills, why they like their pills so much, donkey pilled, donkey excited about a new ball, sees their old owners, save it for the podcast pilled, still recording?, a gossipy question.

Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #800 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann

The SFFaudio Podcast #800 – The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (16 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Connor Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
1815/16, two volumes?, translation, German, not from 1963, way older, the claim about the 1963 version, supposed to be unabridged for the first time, there’s a lot of editor’s notes, if this is an abridged version, what was cut out of earlier translations?, really effects the text, three pages are missing, conked on the head, happens offscreen, it makes the story better, long chapters, the side story about the Irishman, why leave that in, a massive plotpoint, intentionally not put in, makes the story way better, unreliable narration, what makes the story so interesting, gothic novels, Weiland, an American gothic, The Monk, long an convoluted and difficult, Frankenstein and Dracula, taught to watch movies, if teachers knew what was in the text they’re pretending to teach to students it wouldn’t be taught, Othello, the beast with two backs, Desdemona’s house, your house is being robbed, ruffians, lily white ewe is being tupped by an old black ram, race hasn’t been invented yet, the metaphor, elided, minimized, lies on the side by side, learn to read Shakespeare, Dracula is more recognizably put together, from the era of Frankenstein, doesn’t flow with action, 1935 pulp Robert E. Howard story, meandering, very convoluted, re-listen to parts, unreliable narrator, intentionally writing something incorrect, genuinely forgotten his own story, leaving out three pages, the Baron of ____, the big elephant in the room, presume the reason is because Edgar Allan Poe, a doppelganger character, William Wilson, a very short version, different ending, the definitive doppelganger story, all the different spices, counter evidence, a time travel story?, fairly well disproved, told explicitly to set down the text, excuse for publication, what has happened, wearing strange clothes, Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps, post-grad in physics, get outta here ugly, why time travel is impossible, him from the future, every character in the whole story is him, the same scene from the other guy’s point of view, Alex and Cora or Evan, a repeat chapter we skip, bad theory, an explanation given, what makes it a gothic novel, supernatural events explained by weird coincidences, there are no supernatural events in William Wilson, the devil is drink, better explained by mental illness or cognitive schism, somebody gets killed, exact same scar, a series of these sequences, manic phase, depressive phase, non-responsive, catatonic, frenzy and stabs somebody, describing it that way, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, its the same dude, two different dudes, half brother, half sister, main character, did something really powerful, Edgar Allan Poe started writing stories, so many Poe stories are explicable by reading this, The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether, an episode of the first Star Trek, a Robert Bloch story, trust the science, a lunatic asylum, told of his behaviors, strange people acting oddly, how did I come here?, when could I get out?, haunted by a shadowy double, mental schism, not quite there, an archetype, he can feel there’s something going on there that resonates, an evil brother, periodically thwarts the good brother, what makes it gothic, lack of god in Poe’s stories, angels, his most famous, The Raven, she’s dead, there’s no heaven, the argument that he’s having with himself, as the place burns down, he never talks about god, race, they’re not the focus, completely different thing, science and ratiocination and art, The Man Of The Crowd, he’s a doppelganger for that guy, The Black Cat, a guy who drinks to much, he acts very badly, pious and good and kindly person, best read as railing against temperance, takes their complaint, making fun of the temperance movement, the devil element of this, capuchin monk, cistercians monastery, the coffee, monks, popes, when you read Hawthorne, the devil exists, going on about the Devil, a man with a bad idea, a guy in the woods, sin is a big thing in Hawthorne, class stuff, fellow nobleman, marry this princess, so far down the road, there isn’t a prince in the land, educated and learn your letters, the judge who he pays off, the control of the church is massive, a fugitive from a monastery, critical of the church, scheming dominicans, kidnapped, another devil’s elixir, from a Poe mindset, the dangers of alchohol, a lot of drinking going on, cordial, pours it down his sleeve, withers his arm, a sinster arm and a regular arm, proto-doppelganger stuff, a secret science fiction story, I found the time machine, I took a pill to forget, a book on archive.org, did Poe read or speak German?, Metzengerstein, makes sense as a gothic, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, the German ones, video essay about doppelgangers, available in America at the time, an E.T.A. Hoffmann called The Doppelganger, 200 year old German, would have been tough, let’s just look at the facts, sent to a boarding school, not given enough money, gambles, a bad reputation, all things that happen to him, how come you’re an asshole, lived in England and visited Scotland, people were reading stuff, Blackwoods Magazine was a thing, a literary kid, he would have read something like this, there might have been a review of it, critiquing, know in his period as an asshole reviewer, and an orator poet, making it about god, the demons down under the sea, the guy is insane, the angels with jealous of her and me, having sex with a corpse for 50 years, it’s not about that, contending with our daily reality, set in the 1700s, make it more authentic, any more squeeze out of Poe in here, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, the devil literally shows up, metaphorically or hyperbolically, the painter, I’m back, the devil showed up in disguise, alcohol, stuff that makes you act badly, this undercurrent, the dangers of alcohol, prevents people from getting alcohol legitimately for 10 years or so, one of the scenes, painted all these people he knows, that’s him from the future, he’s become a painter, The Oval Portrait, the chateau into which, one of those fantastic, Mrs. Radcliffe, that’s a callout to Ann Radcliffe recently abandoned, warm food on the table, installs him in a turret, armorial trophies, the frame for the story is huge, a painter who paints his girl to death, a big long clunky gothic novel in 8 minutes, dispenses with silly things, videos coming from Israel today, the devil is real, damning humanity, in a black hood, it was all a coincidence, evidence I should repent, explicable, a step towards science fiction, fantasy as a re-imagining of alternative forms of how to deal with reality, tales of ratiocination, C. Auguste Dupin, the devil did it, not it was an orangutan, Poe’s just done with it, gothics do that, the reason we’re reading this text, write it down, like confession, a series of bad things, turns out I was not the murderer, escaping, the unreliable narrator aspect, an alternative theory, may suck as well, if two drink they become connected, there had been a switcheroo, The Prestige (2006), the handwriting is compared, write in Polish, your grammar is terrible, ridiculous excuse, your spelling is incredibly atrocious, after he kills Hermogen and Euphemia, insane in the forest, maybe he is Medatus, slippage, one body with two inhabitants, a literal spirit from another him, Freaky Friday style, Big, a child wishes to become an adult, a psychical link, mysticism, not a potion made in a lab from a Professor Dumbkopf, The Angel Of The Odd, in conversation with a pile of empty bottles, alcohol is dangerous, alcohol is in every scene, small beer, wine, cordial, and the devil’s elixirs, in vino veritas, are you going to stab me in the back?, blackout drunk, covered in blood, a corpse over there, runs off into the forest, stealing somebody’s clothes and haircut, mein, very rare, chow mein, his behavior is such, his gait is that of a capuchin, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, zeusborn devildung, a metanovel, clothes their origin and influence, transcendentalist, the behavior of clothes upon persons, news socks change your behavior, clothes affect your behavior, long sleeve shirt, rainjacket, a labcoat, Peter Hotez, labcoat to interviews on Zoom, makes him feel like he’s a doctor, bowtie, always changing his clothes, changing who you are, the opportunity to make yourself anew, a suit made for him, somebody tries to sell his clothes, undercooked, dispenses with a lot of this stuff, 16 times the length, not even a novel, Ringworld, a novel from a period when novels looked like this, Jane Austen is the weirdo, Tom Jones, all the parts, Charles Dickens’ bread and butter, refine things out of this, Christopher Priest’s The Prestige, stuff you can do with the medium that is exquisitely cool, the audience has to be receptive, so of its time, a modern editor, run it through spellchecker and see if we can throw in some pronouns, ebook it right to Amazon Kindle, the aficionados of this, Bryan Alexander, The Mysteries Of Udolpho, what is the call to adventure, exploring other people, shoves her glove in his bosom, that’s relatable, makes a pact with the devil, I have all these feelings, that woman she looked at me, a compelling part for a lot of people, people don’t really change, trained differently, different media through which they engage, folksinging, he never mentions any of their names, they’re not important, talking up politics, and news and anecdotes, made a bunch of friends but couldn’t be bothered to name any of them, the physician’s infodump, the prince, the abbess, a mom and a goddess and beautiful, she brands him with her diamond encrusted, is this an attack on Catholicism?, it has to be right?, he indicts by showing, he’s edging around things like that, why does he get branded like that?, for later in the plot, explains a lot but then is undermined, is the time machine the drink?, many characters called Franceso, St. Francis, Fransiscus, she’s swearing by the saint?, why she became a nun, what happens to the girl, time is a flat circle, sir, distinguished, so many Francescos, the spectre who keeps reappearing in a purple cloak, ancient ancestor, god damned him to wander the earth, progeny, descendants, the Wandering Jew, Melmoth The Wanderer, he’s branded, identifiable by this distinctive scar, repeating the same mistakes over again, break the cycle, very time travel, slow time travel, time moves at a 1 to 1 rate, 1.3 x speed, with regard to religion, what is he saying?, explicitly called out, when you talk about relics, add up all the relics in the room, pieces of the true cross to build a bridge across the Rhine, the history of all the relics, this is the author telling on themselves, not true, important because it is true, this relic heals people, he tries to flee the city, he doesn’t like the fame, bullshit, we don’t trust him, way pre-temperance, this is pre-Mormons, getting rid of the idea of alcohol as part of the religion, lowers inhibitions, why Poe is an asshole when he’s drunk, get into a fight with his friend, berserker mode frenzy, Carl Jung’s shadow, a mystical apparition or a specter, disassociating from it, the ureliable narrator aspect, Hermogen’s murder, Aurelia, Euphemia, impersonating, Vittoran, somehow killed, killed in self defense, admits that he murdered, in his darker phases, is he confabulating or is he remembering?, he can’t admit it, he’s absolved for it ultimately, always getting out from under, they got him dead to rights here, deus ex machina thing, the conflict of emotions he has, golden, infatuated by her, compared with Saint Rosalia, can’t admit to lusting, angry instead of lusty, supposed to be an emotionally castrated monk, he has these feelings, idolizing, platonic love, or going the opposite way, sexual or sadistic, engaged to Aurelia in the guise of Leonard, that part was funny, that he gets away with it, such an outward liar, how this looks to other people, wilfully dishonest, fakes it until he makes it, part of the appeal of this style of book, ride with a character, without it being a sin that you’ve done, a prurient, skoptsy, men and women castrating and mastectomying themselves, weird quasi-nunneries, they don’t dominate social education the way they did, a priest or a nun or a brother, secularized that, still practicing this stuff, a teen boy who sees a beautiful girl and wants to be with her but can’t even talk about it, girls are doubly shamed, financial and parental permissions, can’t own property, Arthur Machen’s The Hill Of Dreams, angsty horny young man, spiritual horniness, intellectualized, repression, results in a lot of misogyny, madonna-whore, that’s the thing that Poe dispenses with, religions is replaced with aesthetics, the physical beauty and the emotions associated with it, tools he uses to get to ideas that are not that, unless again time travel, students solving stories with teleportation, we are teleporting to the next sentence, Medatus’ switch, from Chapter 7, she’s having a nap, seemed of unconcious of that freedom, the exquisite contours, I’ll allow it, all better inspirations, all doubts and fears, thou unhappy fated girl, the criticism, he can’t say it, the character can’t either, skirts the edges of it, Melville’s explicit, Bartleby, The Scrivener, Typee, feels like medieval Europe, princes and roadside taverns, where’s the tech?, still feathered pens and coffee being introduced, Boston Whist, drafts, faro, his own experience with the church, repressing sexuality, coming from The Monk, a monk running around making trouble, in the hierarchies and the institutions, being pulled back into the institutions, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Gold Mountain, buying working placer mines, 1928, a leftover of Cockaigne, Cloud Cuckoo Land, different LEGO themes, Prester John, monks doing chad style memes on their version of instagram (illuminated manuscripts), it rains cheese, everyone is running around nude, babies raised by cuckoos, dudes illuminating manuscripts, talented artists, literate, playing a games, making memes while bored at work, not reconciled to that yet, wants to have sex and be a man, sit at a desk all day, university is one of the options they are presented with, these are the jobs available, fun engagement with these ideas, knew that was coming, half-brothers, a non-supernatural resolution to that plot, all a placebo, the devil is real, they go mad because they have problems, the painter who showed up, the most overt supernatural element, a note by the editor monk who is compiling all this, the painter seems to be a real force in the world, supernatural in the end, or time travel, the hobo’s ideas, “cigarette trees and hens that lay soft boiled eggs”, this book is an escape, a cutout, took a sip, disconnected, an entertainment for literate people who probably were educated by religious people, but how religious are they?, the sinister truth of institutions, it doesn’t mean it is what it says it is, policemen are her to help me, put out fires, meet a quota, a kid who had autism, my child is being radicalized by online things, can you help, the police strung the kid along until they turned of age to charge him, rationalize it, justify a budget, you have to have terrorists, the DEA, teaching children to read, people who know how to read, a lot of teachers be catholic nuns or christian brothers, some of them are there, the institution, you had to be an anglican, Stephen Fry, anglican priests who don’t believe in god, a secular country with a monarch who is the head of the church, if you demand people fit into a certain conformity, you will make people say they are those things and not believing those things, religious corruption, there’s so much devil talk in this book, not a Neil Gaiman style devil, Hawthorneian style devil, Solomon Kane, obsessed with this, giving into sin, manifesting sin as the devil, cut off the things that cause me to sin, women’s breast, men’s penises, premises are flawed, on the verge, almost want to read it as a satire, it is not a satire, reading Jonathan Swift, this is deadly serious about these ideas, an unreliable narrator, not keeping his story straight, legit lies to people, lying is sinful in Jesse’s view, not as religiously obsessed as we think it is, wink wink nod nod, we all know president Biden’s brain is mush but that’s not the official line, salacious, soap operas of the 18th or 19th century, a monk in love with the woman, rape in the story, the kind of book where if parents saw it in the hands of their children, devils, casting spells from demons, lawful evil?, the wink wink, much what people want, shudder pulps, people can’t quite admit to themselves, bondage on the covers, wrap it in a detective story, a mystery cult, who stole my girlfriend?, it was probably me, Leonard is a guy in the story, why is he called that?, he had a friend called Leonard, not explicitly engaged with art all the way through, medieval art, 19th century artists focusing on Greek mythology, yellow 80s, symbolists, Mary and obscure saints, Hieronymus Bosch, it should be salacious but it is too big and old for that, the rise of illustrations, they had the printing press, an engraving on the first page, maybe, so many striking scenes, the chapters play a role in switching things up, he is Leonard for quite a while, Da Vinci, the mentor of Francesco, Leonardo artist namedropped, we’re very far from this, talking about somebody from the 20th century, around the 1850s stuff really starter to condense itself, not edited, ironically it has an editor, two points that juxtapose, hilarious, I’m not going to get into details, avoid verbose descriptions, verbose as fact, there’s a lot to say, a letter Aurelia wrote to the abbess, dictates the first part of it that is relevant, so meandering, he has a sense of humour, sometimes hard to know, excised the frame, true of Poe too, a really funny book, a novel about a book review, boring sounded, on the same level to get it, operating at their speed, the older it is, lower humour, Jonathan Swift, I’m big I used to be little, the power fantasy of being giant, pissing on the king’s house, what he thinks of kings, the plots of the books in Gulliver’s Travels, first big, then little, then goes to Japan, floating discs, extracting sunlight from cucumbers, the English, the French, scientists, humans, taking care of horses, noble and better, the humour is more base, like a soap opera, the reveal, turns out it was not, all was explicable, incredibly convoluted, a timeline of events, the wikipedia entry, its own timeline, dispute some of this, have to accept it, if somebody else had done this for me, details the first part, summarize the whole text, people need to understand things and be reminded, original research, uncited stuff, helpful but very wrong, Jesse’s time travel theory, not the best theory, Northanger Abbey, a girl reading gothics, gothic romances vs. gothic novels, girl vs. dude centered, novels for teenage girls, oh my god!, R. Murray Gilchrist’s The Stone Dragon, not discovered, or forgotten, an heir to a fortune, forced to marry one of his cousins, has to pick, reading Ann Radcliffe, is Venice like is?, not for young women, see it from the point of view of a dude, #MailGaze, Red Sonja, hashtags should exist for jokes, great for jokes, to be a smarmy shithead, a little trigger thing, a parody of itself, #Hamas, #Terrorism, ultimately dismiss it, as a comedy thing it is delightful, there’s no comeback to, immediately referencing a whole cultural milieu, “intellectual property”, “the Robert E. Howard estate”, weird monks making memes, “this is fine”, “yes”, not even trying to enforce copyright on these, Star Trek vs. the Orville, a little idea that makes me laugh, the real culture, Red Letter Media, the nerdcrew, a real movie?, issue 80 of Spider-Man [Madame Web], so obscure, tchotchkes on his desk, promoting this shitty Sony movie, that’s the new culture, under the bigger culture of youtube being able to delete channels, an exquisite job, making fun of a specific youtube channel, just shills for Star Wars, so offended, delightful, so distinct, ai art is everywhere now, a ship sailing towards a star, makes no sense, no art for that, low rez book cover, two options, public domain art, has to be colour or nobody cares, renaissance art, it looks alright, often, that’s the problem, random number generator, crafting the thing you’re looking for, a picture of a pretty woman, of a house, a door in the roof, can’t we photoshop these things?, take it and crop it, art from the originals, upcoming audiobooks, interior art from Weird Tales, don’t dismss my [Hugh] Doak [Rankin], addicted to heroin but a good artist, too cartoony, time pressure, a tool they can now use, as a tool it is great, hurt things for some original artists, nobody has any money, operating as digital wageslaves, cameras came in, cameras became cheap, easier to do it yourself, the argument against AI art from a non-aesthetic position, if you go by tiers of who’s got it worst, streaming on Onlyfans vs. Twitch, kids seem to have a lot of money, very similar, parasocial relationship, the precentages, digital beggars for Jeff Bezos, not going to become a famous streamer, kids, being an astronaut but for everybody, people spending money on it and getting rich people rich, accounts are disappeared, disruptive organizations, Uber and Lyft, buses and taxis, going offshore, whoever owns that app, chat GPT that was open source and not for profit you would see laws against it, a torrent like service, you would see legislation being proposed, visual artists, writer’s strike in Hollywood, AI refinements on scripts, if you’re in the disrupting business, paying for AI art, $10 a month, if the money gets big enough, just seeing the tip of it, started last year [2023], so colourful, the pulps, mimicking tons of digital art, fluorescent, fractals, cutesy simple art styles, biggest shills, high end art is a scam, laundering money, pay for play, from an artist’s perspective, commercially, spicy pulp covers, 100 years in the future, algorithm, the self-directed artist, commercial artist, a bit more of a shill, the final level, a complete shill, actively devaluing the art, corporatized, cloud services, if we learn anything from this massive tome of a book, just wait 20 years, Poe had his brain into this book, vibin on whatever was happening in this book, that’s awesome, a great image of a cat putting it’s paws on a miller’s son, The Cat And The Miller’s Son, a Bros. Grimm story, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, how google works, the more you describe it, options, choosing is part of art too, The Pixie Princess Of Foss, that is our jobs, we are copying machines, there’s a trick to it, fuck that shit we’re human beings we share that, the tools being in the hands of masters, the distributed costs of the inputs, the laws are not for us they’re for them, only copyrighted when you’re in control of the levers, some of these have been removed by DMCA, what websites were removed from the search, an instagram celebrity, playboy.com, talent agency, The Lancet, a medical journal, there are supposed to be consequences to false claims, it’s all automated shit, nobody is held accountable, the personal phone number of that guy, that’s the problem with AI art, different ways to steal from all the labours everyone is doing, using a fake photoshop, powered by torrents or some browser or bitcoin, more money to spend on programmers, just learn to paint, music AI, give me something like Pearl Jam with a little Blues in it, almost exactly plagiarism, everything is remix, everything is taken from something else, always more allusions you will not spot, The Beatles are just original, a very strange upbringing, talent, aesthetic sense, he practiced, he drank a lot, The Undying Thing by Barry Pain, 100 youtubers making Lovecraft, HBO TV shows with Lovecraft in the title but no Lovecraft in the story, Suitable Flesh (2023), The Thing On The Doorstep, Barbara Crampton, looked a little sinister, some aspects, a good adaptation, very funny, the writing could have been better, Judah Lewis, oh fantastic it works, fiction on film, make sure everybody understands, nobody else has read The Thing On The Doorstep, The Call Of Cthulhu is not a good introduction to Lovecraft, The Unnamable is better, The Nameless City, The Tomb, Dagon, The Music Of Erich Zann, the Irishman in the inn, conjuring annoyance, what is this music?, the source of the horror, to slowly reveal it, the thing who would make it scary, much more about gender, the thing that everyone talks about in the book, not fully human, ancestor was half-fish, a reference back to Innsmouth, Mr Jim Moon, misogyny, you missed a reference there, Re-Animator and From Beyond, Heather Graham, more evil than sexy, a limitation of the budget, some horror movies, schlock, Point Break remake, Dennis Paoli, The Evil Clergyman, not really a story, look a new Lovecraft story, that was just a dream, changed the ending, Bride Of Re-Animator (1990), president reanimator, an Italian version is horrible, we have the syringe full of green stuff, ghost and sex, Turkish Star Wars, saw the poster for Star Wars, we need a guy in a helmet, jeeps and boats, remaking Star Wars as a car movie, an old man in the desert, more Mad Max style, convoys, the metaphor breaks down immediately, what the hell is that, the farmboy who learns to drive like a moonshiner, shooting wamprats, a few monstrosities, everything except Star Wars with the name on it, talk about bat movies, not The Batman, talking points, that’s all real, during COVID, Lovecraft Country swag, that’s just a bribe, comic book movies, just complain about them, being in the movie industry, going to see Oppenheimer, the Barbie thing happens, never going back to the movie theater again, a late showing, during the day, there’s no standards, worse in North America?, it will come for you too, the slow corruption takes its time, the products are bad, Canberra, where most of the government is, pretty good incomes, in a bubble, disposable income to spend, a particular movie theater, high class cinema, artsy films, upmarket, the problem for poor people, the problem of a bad experience, the content in the actual theater, Argyle, The
Beekeeper
, Mean Girls, Wonka, Aquaman, Fighter, Poor Things, Night Swim, Zone Of Interest, ISS, Ru, The Chosen, Lisa Frankenstein, Ferrari, Troll Band Together, All Of Us Strangers, Hunger Games, no pee break, Killers Of The Flower Moon, the product you’re selling in the bookstore, old movies that are in black and white, one night a month, the big screen is better, the best movie experience, at a university film club, the Barbie movie isn’t designed for movie people, bums in seats, the filmmaker, a historical figure, opposite movies, The Lego Movie, a defense, pretty good, maybe 60%, only missing 40%, educated on the allusions, where did the name come from, if you don’t pay attention the first time, The Sandman, a really good story, science fiction elements, the most famous short story by Ray Bradbury, The Veldt, barely got any traction at all?, two theories, suppressed?, already been on youtube for years, use the original title, The World The Children Made, recommend things that fit certain criteria, bugbear, punished, more fool Connor, Matt Ruff got Connor, name recognition, if it has a good name, The Hour Of The Dragon, weird old shit, what percentage of people know who Barry Pain is, people in the year 2100 will thank you, some things that are appealing to the public, hope that they’ll stick around, getting trapped, shilling for garbage, pursue the things that make you excited, chasing things you’re not excited about, if you love Lovecraft, the passion is really important, people know his name, every fourth audiobooks, The Crimson Weaver, Tony Walker, Classic Ghost Stories, recommended it to him, The Stone Dragon, is it deep enough, autoscrolling, closed captioning, nice AI art, came out dark, little bit of romance, a bit or romance, goes into trances, humanskin gloves that turn people, an episode of Friday The 13th: The Series, cursed object of the week, a weird incest vibe, got cursed, the curiosity shop, the premise, gruesome and fun, they’re cousins, more Nancy Drew than it is lascivious longing looks, all the aristocracy marry their cousins, this one hour quick story, they listening to the whole 16 audiobook and four hours of talking about it, a little bit of insight into the audience, skip to the discussion, separate shows, people have control to make the file go ahead, when the analysis starts, April, vacation to Tasmania, bring back a tiger, a devil?, devils are still available, a TV show, how many minutes or seconds until Jesse’s out, thylacines, why Jesse doesn’t need to watch this shit, Aubrey Beardsley, 20 novels, none of them are available, nothing on archive.org?, a short story collection, niche stuff, he’s a dude, The Yellow Book Quarterly, did the art, sounds like Alan Moore, good channel, Lucian’s True History, take some pictures of some Australian islands, nobody can live there because there’s no jobs, to homestead?, government job, a TV camera man, looking for thylacines, the rural areas are hard to find work, with Starlink now, setting yourself up for problems, eke out, chickens, online consulting work, info about the climate and such, the other youtube, Connor bikes around, takes so much time to film stuff, cut so much into your day, some unediting videos.

Posted by Jesse Willis