Robert A. Heinlein – Page 11

The SFFaudio Podcast #640 – READALONG: Wang’s Carpets by Greg Egan

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #640 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Scott Danielson talk about Wang’s Carpets by Greg Egan

Talked about on today’s show:
Greg Bear, its been a while, a story about scientists doing science in a science fiction story, really pleasant, a lot of philosophy and a lot of scientific ideas, establishes themes, distilled, some real questions about the world, many worlds to conquer, sense of wonder, fractals, not conquer, contact is conqueror, very Prime Directivey, a Sterling thing, the Shaper Mechanist stories, biological and technological, parallel lives, they’ve mastered biology, they’re digital, baseline humans, 96 percent of me died, I’m going to mourn that for a while, Borderlands, digistructs, Star Trek, stuck in the buffer, technically this story is really good, not writing problems, digital vs. biological, the CZ folks, there was a reality, not a solipsistic universe, All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, why Scott is worried (what Scott understood), biological copies, they’re not in a simulation, when they arrive at Vega, another level, one of the reviews, a little bit of Borges, how Set Theory interacts with philosophy, an infinity of numbers, this thing could go on for a while, a bigger infinite set, once you set down this path, interesting to think about what’s going on, rather repulsive, a few shows ago, In The Clutch Of The War God went to Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, the post-human aspect, going post-human, changing your eye stalks, your dad’s third copy of your cousin, sound and fury signifying nothing, the act of looking at mp3 files is copying them, I don’t download I only stream, any actions within a computer are copying actions, going to visit a website is downloading it, big sheets of sugar, it turns out its not alive, turns out its not alive, in the interstices, what’s so interesting about this, kind of like Exhalation by Ted Chiang, these things are going on without us, hard fantasy, its much more like Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, learning the rules of a game, why is he telling me about the emotional relationships between these characters, they don’t have belt pouches and breakfasts, they don’t care whether it is raining, following robots, these are not a metaphor, any sense why Jesse would have a reaction, the message is sad, the people at home are living in VR worlds, step one set back and we’re looking at a short story, yeah within the story it all makes sense, within the story, the story is meta-questioning, somewhere deep in the center, why the search for life is necessary, suicide and emigration, people are excited to hear about life, if this goes on…, the carpets seem to have their own thing going on, exactly like your world, its incestuous, Wang tiles can’t be mirrored, very depressing, here’s the problem, here’s the solution, the problem is present again, escape solipsism with reality exploration, they’re playing proceduraly generated Minecraft, like LEGO, clunky cubic architecture, making calculators and computers that run programs inside of Minecraft, the logic chain, Redstone circuits, and or gates, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, like the data tape of a Turing machine, if someone had recorded all of our button presses…, control systems, a series of button presses, home computer programming, BYTE Magazine, Ti 99/4A, most people are not going to have access to this story, The Hard SF Renaissance, Mainly Books And Reading Blog, they have their own private language, a thinking machine, its a person, very distanced from the characters, some of them look like butterflies, post-human stuff, a mirror to the world that they’re exploring, the character of Orpheus, there’s no head involved, Cyberpunk 2077, one of the things you can do in the game is you can modify your character, super-customize your character, purple skin and eight fingers per hand, robot legs, eventually you’re just a thing that was a robot, these are not the bodies of the people back on Earth, the thoughts or the Turings of the people, they have votes, nobody would every consider cheating here, the guy who used to be his own son, it is all about the head, ultimately this is a math story, distinct realms, using math to measure reality, digital vs. analog, digital people living in a digital world, stored in pattern buffers, Carter Zimmerman, exploring the physical world vs. we’ve got aliens, so meta and so Borges, a very interesting crystal fractal thing, alienating, reading about others, there’s so much character work, consciousness downloading, Robert J. Sawyer, Four Lords Of The Diamond by Jack L. Chalker, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, death is not an issue and the biggest issue that ever could be, suicide, immortality, no more copies, downloading memories, a linear existence, explored, tossed-around, really dense, a lot happening, read and listened simultaneously, a different skill, words that give you trouble, spelling, the philosophical exploration, ideas for life, back to Borges, The Library Of Babel, indefinite, infinite, standing room for sleeping, I prefer to dream, a world (not our world), what are in the books, how the world looks, the world consist of rooms, hexagonal, there is not outside world, it could be a giant circle, it could be a carpet, on that water world, some beaches somewhere, the toxic UV, out of contact with the reality of the sun, Plato’s cave creatures, no sense data, social information, a model of the internet, we could hook up webcams, so full, the naming of the planet (Orpheus), he’s despairing, that’s depressing, not a character story, a bit of nostalgia for Paul, all Paul wanted out of science fiction, characters could go hang, their world is presented clinically, they’re there, we’re distanced – like we’re scientists examining them, legitimate emotions, as much as Jesse’s emotions are legitimate, there’s no difference between actual people and fictional people?, an anthropocentric universe, the young earth creationists, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, these are the worries, the Fermi paradox, subspace chatter, why aren’t the Cardassians yelling at the Klingons, are we the first?, the only?, that’s what they’re saying, mocking, a cause for happiness, hey they discovered life on Mars again!, because there’s some methane, every fifty light years there’s a plankton sheet, fifty light years on there are ones with eyes, fifty light years beyond that there are ones with brains who worry about being alone, their hope, a twofer, a good old fashioned excuse to point to an article of November 1965 issue of Scientific American, Border Guards, David G. Hartwell, the lit crit pov, science as a symbolic construct of language, that’s part of it, are you gonna live you life playing computer games or live a real life, digital clothes for your avatar, the post-human people, the trans-human people, dump these bodies, we’re going to be digital, buy the books, the hard reality is they’re stuck in a meatbody, Kiln People by David Brin, its a metaphor for books, just shoot annoyed clones, typical Brin, I wanna play Minecraft, I left a me in the fridge, Transmetropolitan, robot slaves, you’ve got to have a plot, Raymond Kurzweil, cryonics, I can become younger, self-improvement, augmentation, nano-robot stuff, we do this, cataracts, what you’re claiming to think is consciousness, Evan Lampe, current Klingons aren’t interested in developing science, Klingons are post-human larpers, new fashion, what’s the difference between that and culture, the people who wanna be foxes, furries, unrealistic hope, you’re an ape that can swim and put on clothes and light fireplaces and collect rings, you’re not a bird, you’re not a fish, you’re definitely not going into a chrysalis and coming out a butterfly, 20 spots left in my harem, the more x chromosomes the better, if you have the fallopian tubes, we’re biological, we can’t fully transform from that, Jesse Simulator 1.2, a mistake like warp drive, that’s just gravity assist, Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton, I liked Sliders too, the farcasters in Hyperion, every room on a different planet, which planet does he choose to poop on, how many classes do we have in this story, everybody is equal except how many generation you are, suicide of emigration, what those carpets are doing, that we know of, they don’t have eyes, we come with assumptions, everything that looks at stuff have eyes, trees can detect light, designed to be depressing, these are not supposed to be humans, would you be cool with being a clone?, your clone uncle is now a butterfly, they have Wikipedia, post-scarcity, trans-humanist space journey, you can drink digital root beer and take digital photographs, another rant, AI software used in photos, HDR, slices of the reality that was there, the mark 1 eyeball, cheating, that lady who restored the painting of Jesus to look like a capuchin monkey, this is what Jesus looked like maybe, Paul’s philosophy of photography, that’s not really what you saw, the bad driving out the good, a weird overlay of reality, a watermark, a fascinating discussion, similar arguments in sports, a valid sports participant, a list of things you can’t do, using technology to enhance a performance, SPVIZ runtime, you never could, the Iwo Jima flag raising, manual photograph, choosing where to put and place the camera, it has always been the case you can’t trust the narrative, media literacy, common sense, The Invention Of Lying (2009), its a stage of human development, if I make a scary noise mom thinks I’m in pain, not everything is real, they can edit their personalities, change their dispositions in radical ways, a totalitarian state, I seem to remember that not being the case, so spotty, so useful, have the focused changed, the narrative, so meta, all those sets, if not deliberately, the story itself as part of the story, levels of a story, wholly artificial, a construction that’s interesting to look at, the appeal of sodoku, a logic exercise, a program that will do it in real time, kind of like dominoes, one sided tiles, good story, depressing story, in the Aurora sort of way, maybe that’s why there’s no photo of him, he might be a butterfly, the fundamental constants changed, the Clockwork Rocket series, what if light bends differently, the Greg Egan way.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #638 – READALONG: Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #638 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons and Trish E. Matson talk about Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre

Talked about on today’s show:
1978, kicking around for years and years, The Entropy Effect, the first Star Trek novel, Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand, a report with science fiction fandom, Will’s choice, The Moon And The Sun, Louis XIV, Jesuit scientist, sea-monsters, consciousness about the world, politics, first contact, a little person, a magnum opus, 1998, a capstone, the Hugo for best novel, Nebula and Locus awards, Heinlein dedicated Friday to Vonda McIntyre, polyamory, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marge Piercy, Roger Zelazny, Joanna Russ, a tender and compassionate adventure story, swashbuckling, saddle buckling, acrobat skill, diplomat skill, real life swashbuckling, the personal rather than the institutional, dedicating a book to other people, my agent and my wife, turning institutional into personal, this is not a Heinlein book, why Heinlein thought something about it, Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, the first in a trilogy, there’s a lot in this book, three different stories, little vistas, technologies used on this world, biology as a technology, very Dune, birth control, just slide it in, weaving world-building elements, the door dilated, second wave feminism, bears rereading, destroying so we can rebuild, an Earth empire planet, comparative text looking, the names of the snakes, October 1973, 1978, the ending, tons of changes, a lot dropped, stuff added, the last sentence, healers heal quickly, February and March would have come out in late 77 and the start of 78, a polish, a lot of plot threads that don’t go anywhere, we think she’s going to the city and then go to the stars, an Ursula K. Le Guin novel: City Of Illusions, The City And The Stars, rocket jockey finds love in space, subverted expectations, amazingly clever for a first novel, female protagonists in leadership positions, being in control of your own biology, what is he talking…, literally 100 years out of date, very Dune like, sex-education, The Many Colored Land by Julian May, biofeedback, evolving and changing and growing, outside of the center city, fighting for power, Jesse’s death, not dated at all, more social SF than hard SF, snake medicine good for somethings not so good for other things, making slaves, lies as a form of control, a 1973 person, in a religion that is telling you what to not do and what to do, people who are reading books, if you’re in the science fiction readership, an inoculation against the future, abstinence through yoga, will that change society? 100%, so immune to disease, breeding her horse, its a mule, where the novel doesn’t work as well, unfulfilled notes, what that material is made of, relationship material, a fix-up, a new view into the that world and a new problem to solve, The Lone Ranger, Kung Fu, a western, The Mandalorian, not with a flamethrower, education and information, Paul’s D&D tweet, the setting of a D&D game, she’s a druid, that time she bit someone, the crazy, the crazies, what we’re supposed to think about, Jesse is honour bound not to talk about the book (lest Jesse be a hypocrite), psychedelic, a drug book, heroin users, a medical problem, a dreamsnake breeder, a drug dealer, scenes with this character, the third part with the dome, alien plants, did the otherworlders come and leave the snakes?, left for us to excavate, going to visit her teachers, she’s lost her journal, its going to go well, how the dreamsnakes reproduce, to drop it there, why these things exist in the story, her real name, she’s snake, bestowed upon you, like the title doctor, call me nurse, the Doctor, Doctor Who, The Master, two kinds of degrees, the Bachelor, the Rani, other time lords, a special figure, living up to that title, a badge of honour, the War Doctor, training be damned, on a sentence by sentence level her prose is quite poetic, why isn’t this a classic?, she’s doing a recipe for school, for a Clarion West class, very powerful, setting things up, laying things down, this future, that not paying off is where it has gone wrong, the Kung Fu aspect, with her actions, she does a lot of telling along with the showing, every gun doesn’t have to be a chekov’s gun, a sandbox vs. a railroad, all the more rich, why you shouldn’t turn your D&D campaign into a novel, Jesse’s birthday present to Will:

The Birthday Present by Jesse

Once upon a time there was a gentle black bear who always wore the disguise of a human when going shopping.
He was a sly bear, so instead of just wearing a mask made of a human face, he also had gloves made from the skin of human hands.
Because it was his mother’s birthday he was determined to buy her a nice gift, in this case a bone china teapot.
As he approached the city gate the bear in human guise was asked by the city guard if he was “just a bear wearing a human face and human hands as gloves.”
Instead of denying it, the bear smote his challenger, his powerful claws making short work of the sentry.
In the third gift store he went into the disguised bear found a delightful bone china teapot with pink flowers and intertwining green ivy decorating its sides and lid and the bear knew it would make his mother sow happy.
Asking if the proprietor took human corpses as currency, the bear proffered the guard’s corpse, and after a moment’s calculation of the taxes, the shop owner consented, knowing there was plenty of bone in the corpse for the making of new teapots, and skin for the making of masks and gloves.

The End

making the story better, symmetrical, solving all of a story’s problems, a mini-Clarion, two stories set in the same city, adding the depth of richness, whatever you lay down pays off, out of the tunnels in Fallout 3, each individual stories, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, novels are a marketing campaign to move paper, novelettes are better, the whole market for audible.com, longer books not better books, pushing novels over short stories, 50s and 60s and 70s, trilogies, I need these stories to be individual rather than be collective, healers heal quickly, don’t think of it as a novel, Alan Kaster’s INFINIVOX audiobooks, fiction podcasts, Escape Pod, Podcastle, Uncanny Magazine, Clarkesworld, new fiction, another Heinlein, more about snakes, the dream part, hearing about it over these decades, something Scott said, second wave feminism, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, totally changed the fabric of society, what makes this book good, Trekonomics, what makes Star Trek good, its the ideology, a beautiful child with deep sexual shame, what makes this book good, how people could relate to each other, whether science fiction should be didactic, stigma, how you can relate to other people, the post-apocalyptic setting, step-out side the system, what science fiction can do, fear, a powerful story, deep truth, escape from pain, forget myself, fantastic things, this is what made it really good, the ideology, all of the baggage of society we live in, Gödel, Escher, Bach, imagining differently being, life outside of capitalism, the divine right of kings, different ways of living, examine our assumptions, you cannot protect someone completely without enslaving them, puts it into action, giving advice, Hippocratic oaths, ethics, a great negotiator, a great character, as a TV show, Raised By Wolves, character based, what makes Deep Space Nine such a great show, a darker prophetic aspect, outside of time, all the more powerful on screen, the way other people react to her, the new shirt, her feelings about the shirt, a very talented writer, Superluminal, disparate elements, reacting to assumptions being challenged, legalistic, a fun read, started from a short story, right after Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the very serious Mr. Spock, this is just her western, the genre she’s writing in, responding to the stranger, Conan stories, the effect is rather different with the Conan stories, a female inversion of the Conan stories, a wizard who has a pet monkey, Rogues In The House, scalpeling and herbs and a couple of snakes and the sticking around, the handsomest youth in town, thrown a lady over his shoulder and running off into another adventure, Melissa continues on, part of her being a woman, making a family vs. fleeing a family, just not marketable, center city, communication with the outside universe, an oppressive thing, the center as a first world nation, the strange weirdo people, whatever skills they brought, the one thing you don’t really feel, The Wizard Of Oz, poppies and heroin, ultimately it would be a lie, underwhelming, so locked up, not because you’re powerful but because you’re weak, when people are in bounty the instinct is to share it, Jesse hates feel good stories, fruit trees, a four fruit tree, what it is to go down and pick berries, a tree shoving apples in your face, you fucked it up, the food bank, the food bank is a new thing, the element of the church, the corporate thing, that’s a different show, how the health care system is terrible, wandering doctors, why don’t you move into town, healers retire to communities, she’s got the arthritis, word of mouth, she came to help that child, messengers, caravans, ships in the ocean would call out the news to each other, a pro-vaccine book, Arvin, we change viewpoints, arrested for assault, oh this is plot, action rather than dialogue, more dialogue please, a sidelight on the mayor, to figure out the truth, the slavery stuff, things changing over time, half-life calculations, radioactivity, Babylon 5, “The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars”, A Canticle For Leibowitz, what we assume, maybe they can heal her there, maybe the can’t, they’re liars, he says he’s going to heal us, the mirror of center in this dreamsnake cult, pain-relief, sound like real life, enslaved to a product that’s illegal, the externality, excommunicate them, damaged by whatever community they’re in, Melissa is hiding all sorts of things, the stable manager, the lies are consistent, something to the rumours, not face value, the reasons are forgotten, whatever led to the apocalypse doesn’t matter, we’ve got to learn to cooperate, families of three now instead of two, we need to work together, how the chores are going to be distributed, gathering the firewood, cleaning the horses, Scott may have heard of families, a family isn’t a democracy, an anarchy, age and experience, make demands, too harsh, fleeing the society of the family, fleeing on their own happy, Melissa wants to do all the chores, seeing the value in herself, self-respect, a nice journey, good messaging, the war was long over almost forgotten it had destroyed everyone, those domes, Larry Niven Ringworld material (scrith), The Ringworld Engineers, none of them cooperated, dwindled away, the engines off the Ringworld, it would pay off to read that terrible book, progressively worse, worthwhile?, seemed inexplicable, we like that too, adventuring, subversion, the god gambit, Speaker To Animals, if Will was in the adventure party he’d be Kizinti, he feels contempt for the fucking plant eaters, Bechdel Test, two aliens talking to each other, Garak and Quark, you solids, Odo, actors under, Nessus, comedy gold, Ringworld should be done as a comedy, Louis Wu is the straight man, the three person partnership, Jesse and Meredith and Alice, non-binary, they’re all female, Anna Fields, the cassette flipping information, you buy a license from Audible.com, buy from Blackstone and Downpour you do own it, Ringworld on Earth with a lot less rocket stuff, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre AUDIOBOOK

Of Mist And Grass And Sand by Vonda N. McIntyre

The Serpent's Death by Vonda N. McIntyre

The Broken Dome by Vonda N. McIntyre

Droom Slang (Dreamsnake)

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The SFFaudio Podcast #636 – READALONG: Trekonomics: The Economics Of Star Trek by Manu Saadia

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #636 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about Trekonomics: The Economics Of Star Trek by Manu Saadia

Talked about on today’s show:
2016, a French economist, economic theory, Capitalism In The 24th Century, the other famous French economist (Thomas Piketty), Nobel adjacent, the dismal science, kinda light in every, Debt The First 5000 Thousand Years by David Graber, the bluecheks and their moms and dads, a class of people, the ones who benefit from all the productivity gains, the present, the narrator, Oliver Wyman, Discord, running a D&D campaign for his kid, he was fabulous, mispronouncing Risa and Garak, a problem from four years ago, a fan of pretty much everything, comics, computer games, A Fall Of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke, a Star Trek sex book, a CBC interview, Evan is a historian, lay the evidence on thick, you need a fair amount, the H.P. Lovecraft thing, writing long, the chapter on the tragedy of the commons, if it was the only episode, the wormhole, other commons issues, a popular book, funded almost like a kickstarter, the New York Times review, Paul Krugman, Isaac Asimov’s Psychohistory, a smart stupid person, he used to have some sort of argument, the class that he’s in, he wanted to be Hari Seldon, a tame soft, foundationally shaking, laying out all the evidence, 20 episodes talked about in any sort of detail, Arena, very light on everything he touches on, the footnotes, go with it, why the PDF is kind of useful, not strictly true, other episodes, an entertaining book, breaking into how different part of the Trek universe economy could work, isn’t this interesting, sorta-kinda-maybe for the future, The Science of Sci-Fi, the Science of Trek, weak economics, a decent freshman class, The People’s Republic Of Walmart, a couple of mentions, use this book as a template, given its boring cover, a very successful book, what did he do right, the prelude, making it personal, why is this important to him?, taken through that, compared to the material in the book, the way you should do it, write it from Riker’s point of view, angry about his twin brother (Thomas Riker), Imzadis And Isotopes, sex between species and with robots, how we never see Ferengnar, Rom and Quark, practicing business, the great scenes, taking bribes every three seconds, this woman is dressed, mother get undressed immediately, we regulate women’s dress, in Saudi Arabia or British Columbia, women barebreasted, the French banning burkinas on beaches, get that burkina off, Rom is very close to his moogie, head on his naked lap, this is very interesting, Evan’s sex book is going to be way better than this book, its going to be great, if this all it takes, a very easy recipe, cut it off at a certain date, there’s no sex in Discovery (there’s sexual politics), Burnham and that Klingon human thing, some kind of relationship, working on puzzles, accept that its not Star Trek, the J.J. Abrams movies, they’re entertaining, what looks like entertainment, its not Star Trek because the characters have the motivations of petty teenagers from the 20th century, so chill with everything, they take the counselor’s advice seriously, Data’s in command of the Enterprise, finally, a weird episode, not consistent, exceptions, the Enterprise D, like Vulcans, Saadia’s argument, the Star Trek films up to VI, Kirk is racist, out of Roddenberry’s control, some fun stuff but a bad film, acting out of character, a fish out of water, why that first Star Trek film feels so cold, very Isaac Asimov, a souffle, very fluffy material, there’s some flavour, way to much time on GPS and not enough on the Internet, the distribution of digital goods, he’s right, government funded military projects, a fluffy outline, who the audience is supposed to be, conservative Star Trek plans, a social democrat, a red diaper baby, who would otherwise support more conservative policies, we’re not the audience for this book, a lot depends on the equation, a modest growth in productivity, the average worker would be making 60 times what they’re making now, the expansion of productive capacity, 500 million people elevated to the middle class in China, inequality, the transition, maybe one day, Paul blew through it, very easy listening, well written, I didn’t expect this to go full Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, this book has disappointed you, he made the point so lightly, in the light of that long conservation, what’s wrong with this book, THIS MEANS THIS, this clip from Sisko and Jake have constructed a Kontiki style solar sail ship, Jake and his dad have a conversation about, I beamed in at 630 every night, you must have used up a month’s worth of transporter credits, making notes, he didn’t get on Netflix and go through everything, not the definitive word on Star Trek’s economy at all, the Star Trek Communist, very Star Trek positive, Trotskyist are natural opportunists, this book is for or by Paul Krugman, on the level of Paul Krugman, Leigh Phillips, Michal Rozworski, the animated series didn’t exist, Ferengi is the plural, cringey, messing up the interpretation of Arena, the War in the Pacific, the original story by Fredric Brown, Eric Rabkin, the imperial Japanese war flag, the United States fighting Japan, Knock, with aliens, a dog knocking on the door, it could be a woman, the only original Star Trek episode credited to an original story?, a metaphor for something that’s really going on, the Klingons and the Romulans, Romulans are the unknown enemy, not so great stereotypes, how the Romulans are introduced, we get to see them as the audience, a lot like something we already know, they change over time, now allies, Wesley Crusher, a first season goof, Jesse thinks he’s a supergenius, boy this guy’s great, Jesse has a point here man, interesting design mirroring, we’re looking at ourselves, that mirror to us, the Paul Krugman part, as the years go by, we can change ourselves, our being in the neighbourhood, we can lead by example, original series attacks on the Vietnam War are subtle, a jujitsu metaphor, what makes good science fiction, distorted mirrors, no preaching, just showing, given heft for the book, Paul wasn’t crazy, the Neutral Zone, conflict free, Trekonomics II would be 3 pages long, dismissed as entertaining, Enterprise or Voyager, Red Matter, the Science of Star Trek, is there a single Voyager mention?, the hologram doctor, a post scarcity culture in position of scarcity, they never use the Maquis shuttlecraft, fabricating shuttlecraft, what can we give you?, libraries, copying data, how does the Federation trade with other cultures, studying for a long time, focused on Deep Space Nine, there’s something economics related every episode, shooting darts at Quarks, money to be made in Fetish holodeck programs, not mentioned in this book: copyright, patents, the reputation economy, Bashir is up for a science prize, reputation is good, those holosuite programs, audiobooks and pdfs are post-scarcity, I get whuffie, the cost is clicking on it, the kind of pay Quark is talking about, crowdfunded?, credits that aren’t real, infinitely abundant, to deal with other economies, Jake Sisko isn’t joking, UBI, Mack Reynolds, Utopia In The Year 2000?, Looking Backward again?, the real problem now is not enough important work for people, guaranteed universal income, Commune 2000 AD, great idea, a good speculation, why there arent guys flying around in their own ships, Harry Mudd, the replicator gap, not full Trekonomics, Sisko’s girlfriend, dilithium crystals, rare materials, Kai Wynn, argricultural products, look good for the federation, post-scarcity food, not post-scarcity on housing, housing justice, there are solutions, podcasts, audiobooks, knowledge, clothing, access to knowledge vs. knowledge, Jerry Pournelle, by the year 2000, the thing that make it, getting this PDF, web-fu, the way to ask the right questions, google has an agenda, its not google, duckduckgo, bing, the scandals, delisting torrents, every day they delist, depromote, artificially promote, preventing access to post-scarcity knowledge, very light, too disposable, there there, as wishy washy, Oliver Wyman to the narration, Garak and Risa, his Picard was pretty good, not publishable, doing too much, some mean and some mean, yeah!, Will out of the woodwork, not the average kind of mean, meanness is important, not something you throw away, Rom is too much like his dad, their relationship, made too soft by his mom, how Riker had only a dad, his dad was an asshole, he’s got the swagger, the sex book is going to be a really good book, how many siblings they have, Lwaxana Troi, dilettante lifestyle, chase after husbands, ambassadorships, anybody can apply to be an ambassador, broken in a positive way, Worf’s kid, a weird sexy aunt, half-human and half-worfian, Imzadi by Peter David, how Riker and Troi first met, when you’re a mother, the gender book, there’s so much there, a great economics book to be taken out of it, a third of the density it should be, when is the meat going to come?, one big mistake, the Ferengi chapter, do they really become social democrats, the Grand Nagus, progressive on gender issues, Rom as the new Grand Nagus, Evan’s fantasy alternative universe, CBS, Star Trek: Grand Nagus Rom, reforms, right to unionize, a reactionary sexist society, with a foreigner wife in a sexist society, Cardassian refugees, how do you effect change in a society that doesn’t really want it?, how most Ferengi are, as long as she’s naked its okay, Leeta walking around naked?, simple, facile, need more Will on this, a Liberal book, where Liberalism starts to bleed into Democratic Socialism, the Fabian Society, the educated classes, revolutionary rupture, they think they’re smart, the purpose of this book, abolishing poverty, the educated reader is kinda dumb, an American audience, written for American intellectuals, I beleive in science, embracing the government giving away free stuff, its purposes, if rich people today owned a replicator would they give it away?, no., what Star Trek is, everyone is an angel (is built into it), how this hurts the drama, this book’s fundamental purpose if flawed, a rigorous piece of writing, a jumping off point, a Trekonomics podcast, episodes cited, 22 episodes of TNG, Unification, Chain Of Command, Jesse wasn’t qualified a minute ago, a very interesting topic, a rich universe, they randomly showed up next in the sequence, I, Mudd, exiled to a planet of androids, they can’t love, swap the enterprise crew with androids, you can download my brain into an android, this is the best, what will humanity be in a post-scarcity society?, a humourus episode, he didn’t watch this episode, he didn’t do a watch threw, except Discovery, do your homework, the chapters, Money Went The Way Of The Dinosaurs, Why Is Everyone So Worried About Holograms Taking Over The Galaxy?, The Meaning OF Work in Star Trek, Tea Earl Grey Hot (The Replicator), Only A Fool Would Stand In The Way Of Progress, Garrett Hardin and the Tragedy Of The Commons, a terrible episode, bold and interesting, how why?, the wormholes a better model, why didn’t the Federation, if they’re a serious empire, this is the Panama Canal or Suez, all of WWII’s North Africa Campaign, Gibraltar and Suez, Canadian peacekeepers, why the US government is interfering in Egyptian elections, Israel’s flex, the Federation really is goody-two-shoes, an unimportant starbase, if this were realpolitik, Section 31, existential threats to the Federation, the Tal Shiar and the Obsidian Order, a realpolitik going on, once you get promoted to admiral, don’t do it, don’t do that again!, I was under orders, O’Brien has to work for 8 hours, Wolf 359, I will have to court martial you or promote you, orders are not mandatory in Starfleet, think for yourself, you should disobey bad orders, in this world they’ve constructed, when Kirk disobeys in Star Trek III, demoted to Captain, Red Letter Media, disobeyed direct orders, he saved the Earth so forget about those crimes he did, primitive societies, Jared Diamond, mocking leaders, all power comes from the barrel of the gun, Mao, fundamental political principles, the Golan Globus Theater, a kickboxing movie, a force of police, you are in charge if they obey your orders, a starship doing busywork, self-sealing stembolts, why Trump was a good president (he was so incompetent he couldn’t get much done), taking away the mask, kick your clown class upstairs and take away their actual powers, you can be an artist, Picard thinks he’s meeting his son, we were tricked!, rock climbing in some cave system, between jobs, a petty criminal, a Federation colony world, bumming around Europe, the majority of the Federation citizen lives, sells is a metaphor, Wellington, New Zealand, a lifestyle career, I’m a professional writer, a publisher paid him no money, learning the ropes, nautical phrases, that weekly poker game, when the chips have no consequence in poker, if they were playing for holodeck time, can’t we play something else this week?, scarcity in holodeck time, all the teenagers on the Enterprise are first in line, there’s no lineups for holodecks, Ice Pirates (1984), sex on a beach, characters who were single children, the Vulcan’s aren’t having that many kids, sexually declining population, Deanna has no siblings, Deanna Troi’s alien baby, lots of sex, both red shirts, human women are too weak for me, Worf’s college years, Dax injures Worf during sex, Ezri, a hate listen, Our Opinions Are Correct, Birth Control In The Future, egg people and sperm people, the way Star Trek deals with birth control, if Troi is on the pill, an IUD?, is Riker got an on off sterilization pill?, triracial isolates, they ended up Irish, a good episode, bangs Riker, a good episode for the sex book, high tech Amish, dealing with pills, your turned off, a hypo-thing, I’ll turn you back on when you’re ready to reproduce, how is this possible, an abortion conversation, Worf is pro-abortion, what the episode is largely about, The Paradise Syndrome, the Indian lady, a son he didn’t know about he wants to spread those space seeds, The Mark Of Gideon, the Doomsday Clock book, The Population Bomb, what’s wrong with the intellectual media, this this this, seize on a thing, telling all their friends about it, keep beating those dead horses, Malthus, the 80s popular book: Our Angry Earth by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl, they’re not wrong, a couple of centuries, demographic transition, 100 years 6 kids to 3 kids, it took China 10 years, too few people, Japan’s suffering, we’ll figure it out, Quark falls in love with a trans-sexual?, like Twelfth Night, passing, fake ears, definitely female, sexually aggressive towards Quark, we should be doing business, she was attracted to his lobes, locked up women, locked out of shopping for clothes, the Ferengi birth rate, controlling female Ferengi bodies, done for laughs, a menacing villain with whips, slavery, sold into indentured servitude, a kind of cultural oppression, Bajorans worshiping all day long, a Thanksgiving episode of Deep Space Nine, episodic, season by season, plant the seeds early, we can extrapolate, matched for the enterprise, equal in power to theirs, what a Daimon is, all of that stuff should have been in this book, all the Trek books, A Rules Of Acquisition Audiobook, kind a long for a book so short on Ferengi stuff, Interstellar Capitalists, half the book should have been Ferengis, and a third replicators, what latinum is worth, no holodeck on the Defiant, a holobunk?, like Riker watching people playing, read books, chamber music, Beverly Crusher putting on a play, Captain Jellico, because he’s an asshole, from 3 shifts to 4 shifts, how cops do it, more leisure time, he can have a bigger crew, have meaningful work, where Picard falls in love with his stellar cartographer, what Riker and Picard is worried about, Jake’s buddy Nog, I wanna be your apprentice, he doesn’t give the money back, the only way to be bribed is by your earnestness, Quark pays the station rent, c’mon man, replicate tons of gold pressed latinum, an act of war, they werent invented but they were around, ends the Ferengi threat, what kind of a threat are they, even Enterprise, when Starfleet was just formed, hidden, Discovery is not really worth talking about, every society has secret police, harsh lessons for Paul, all the new secret polices, Homeland Security, I wanna be droned by women, if she’s a lesbian or a transsexual, I don’t want a white cis-gendered man to drone me, Jesse killed the show, Gina Haspel was a woman (torturer), don’t you want to see women empowered (to torture people), why it was successful book, is that what it was attempting to accomplish?, who doesn’t like talking about Star Trek, he could have made some goddamn notes, brag about not doing the reading, a posturing thing, more tragic, Oliver Wyman can’t sleep because of mispronouncing Garak, Evan doesn’t like being called out for his podcast mistakes, a decent number of Deep Space Nine episodes, 6 Voyager episodes, Enterprise has slavery, all of Star Trek being about Heinlein, Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein, slamming Space Cadet, Solution Unsatisfactory, Heinlein is really dealing with issues in the world, Roddenberry is engaging with Heinlein, the Asimov quotes, a positron brain = Asimov, Foundation is pretty fucking weak, comparing this book to Wastelands by W. Scott Poole, if Star Trek Communist did the introduction or foreward to this book, everything is communism, there needs to be see some real criticism, how we get from where we are to where we need to be, 1848, The Communist Manifesto, a layabout german, Das Kapital, most of his history, original scans, people change stuff, and nobody fucking cares, Wayne June has changed the text of The Rats In The Walls, Mr. Blackman vs. Mr. Niggerman, its what was written, you don’t change Mark Twain’s words, he’s busy being a dad, sleepless nights, the queer subtext between Bashir and Garak, sexual perversion, interest in torture, a Garak chapter, S&M and the Cardassian Union, impact play, consensual Klingon rage, Cardassian female head spoons are blue, they paint it? like lipstick, a visual sign of estrus, fighting with O’Brien, fighting = flirting, the sperm people and the egg people, anybody can breed with anybody else, we don’t see any half Cardassians half humans around, it might be lipstick, natural skin tone, watching the spoon colours, Garak being gay, Dukat’s daughter, he’s bisexual, he presents as gay, she’s the only Cardassian, any Cardassian in a storm, he has one with Odo too, overt romance, impacting the plot, the Kira Odo relationship, all of them, Marx book order, the first in the series, notebooks, Das Kapital, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase, what if Jesse shits all over the book?, I don’t want to make people mad, get at the truth, a good narrator and a friend of mine, as long as the book doesn’t suck, The Sowers Of The Thunder by Robert E. Howard, The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft.

Trekonomics: The Economics Of Star Trek by Manu Saadia

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The SFFaudio Podcast #622 – READALONG: Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #622 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Olav Rokne talk about Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
Blue Book, 1951, Planets In Combat, the prose in this novel is “turgid”, here comes the trolling, swollen and distended and congested, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, short punchy sentences, larded up with excessive detail and flowery prose, Lovecraft, turgid vs. intricate, complex vs. complicated, like a clock or a little watch, tiny little things designed and built to have a precise effect, to appreciate the exact feeling, be accurate in your criticism, why are they using these slurs, you can’t just swap in Scazli, Annalee Newitz, Our Opinions Are Correct Episode 65: We’re Officially Done with Lovecraft and Campbell, Evan tricked Jesse, Will tricked Jesse, “I’ll allow it”, why we can dismiss John W. Campbell and H.P. Lovecraft, read Ayn Rand, an incredibly odd and limiting and damaging world view, replaced, or filtered through Scalzi, Olav’s beef with Ayn Rand, a 15 page didactic rant, the sun rises again, Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, an article by Annalee Newitz reading a book review of a biography, a very interesting block quote, starting as a socialist and ending as a libertarian, Glory Road, I Will Fear No Evil, any redeeming features, was it turgid?, it can’t be turgid, they don’t want people to read Heinlein, maybe they’ll become libertarians?, Rand Paul vs. Ron Paul, in the American context, if you want to understand the United States, a preponderance of non-Americans, treaty six territory, how could you read a book like this and say it has nothing of value, a whack ideology, Neo-liberalism, Neo-conservativism, a kind of censorship ideology, you absolutely must read all the Heinlein, a certain amount of pushback on gatekeepering, talking to fans vs. writers, Paul lives in twitter writerland, nothing past 10 years ago (or 30 years ago), don’t do your homework, how far back do you “need” to read to sell today, safely skip, Heinlein TLDR, “just read Scalzi”, Old Man’s War, “Scazli is the new Heinlein”, marketing of people, X is the new Y, she/her pronouns should be they/them, an explainer in The New York Times right before Lovecraft Country started, trying to understand reality, this is not applied, people not doing their homework is what bothers Jesse, not a new thing, Scalzi wrote up giant piece, Poe is not a third rate writer, where’s the evidence that Lovecraft is sexist?, Lovecraft is not interesting on gender, The Thing On The Doorstep, Zealia Bishop, The Mound, humble and respectful, The Unnameable, Heinlein is incredibly progressive, The Pleasant Profession Of Robert A. Heinlein, The Number Of The Beast, SPRUNG, other womens’ parts, it’s a kissing book, appropriating, adjacent to the sexual revolution, Stranger In A Strange Land was very influential, ahead of the curve, students pushing for access to birth control, early wifeswapping, as a female human being Maissa didn’t want to read it, talking about breasts and nipples makes you a sexist, arguing with podcasters who are not listening to us, Farah Mendlesohn, where’s the audiobook?, The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, the fauns, the move overs, the gregarians, tiny pans, affectionate, addicted to hugs and nuzzlings, they have hands, they wanna eat your pies, they’re wonderful!, that’s from The Unnameable, a less rapey version of Pan, Little Fuzzy, the fauns of Venus, the fog-eaters of New London, dragons and fauns, a fantasy Europe, Paul is very lucky, a juvenile (novel), he becomes a man, he must act like a man, his grandmother gets younger, a child soldier, a lot of ambivalence, where Charlie Jane are coming from, goddamn it Heinlein why are you going on about this?, war and the army, Starship Troopers, is it fascist?, Paul Verhoven is arguing with Heinlein, how we should react to Heinlein, interesting relationships, modality of talking to other people and bureaucracy, this is a book about waiting around in the airport, seem nice, talkin’ to the cops, dealing with passport and immigration, displaced person, The Wizard Of Oz, the characters he meets and the lessons he learned, his home is space, the asteroid belt, citizen of the Solar System, Citizen Of The Galaxy, recycled elements, picks up stuff from his own life, Thorby, re-writing Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Annapolis, Farmer In The Sky, Time Enough For Love, a lot of material out there, the comic book, two different audiobooks, the Full Cast Audio audiobook, abridgments, some fools add sound effect of a creaking door, a new kind of audiobook, Bruce Coville’s company, maybe 30 minutes shorter, you don’t need sound effects, the Blackstone Audio audiobook, the Chinese restaurant owner, the casting was different with the artist drawings, the only commercially available one, out of circulation, a super-shame, lost forever, have a friend like Jesse, The Boy’s Life version (low rez), appealing to Boy Scouts Of America, Evan was a Boy Scout, youth movements of the 20th century, feeding people into the military, the Chinese Boy Scouts, the Hitler Youth, militarism, Evan largely agrees with Jesse about war, what kind of war is this?, a revolution, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress from a point of view, libertarian, anti-colonialist aspect, a breakup of Empire story, a fantasy, the American Revolution, the settler colonists declaring independence, the support and consent of the fantasy natives, Heinlein is awash in something, rocked by national liberation movements, up to a certain point in the novel, Chinese, some of them are bad guys and some of them are good guys, fantasy national liberation movement, aristocratic dragons, libertarian dragons, we have to be careful about saying Heinlein is a libertarian, Heinlein is not Ayn Rand, entrenched in their way of life, enjoy their boomerness, more and more or less and less aware of people who are not you, being in the military is like being in a socialist state, struggling over and over again, the American Revolution, the way Canada came to be, a secret, getting in on the rest of Canada, we promise to send you a train, what else we gonna do?, a bargain and a deal, get swallowed up by the States, the U.S. Revolution as a coup d’eta, this flaw, yet another Civil War, he is aware of it, a foundation style people above this nationalism, Podkayne Of Mars, Heinlein went and visited the Soviet Union, pointing out gulags on a map, he’s not one thing, Ayn Rand’s objectivism is objectively wrong, Red Tory, the Red Tory manifesto, libertarianism with a conscience, conservative, free expression, free speech, being free, he might think the hippies reading his book uncouth but he won’t bash them for it, bookleggers, do we or don’t we, McCarthyism, this whole backstory behind this current war and revolution, the planet that was destroyed, hidden knowledge, yes but not really, all of Heinlein’s stuff is set in the same universe (Future History), the Antarctic revolution, even the terrible stuff, oh Jesse, way to goddamn long, Tunnel In The Sky, remember the least, teeth on edge, aged poorly, out of place, the early horseriding, L. Ron Hubbard, New Mexico landscapes, out of place, squaw, Indian buck:

[“We’ve got all day,” he cautioned Lazy, “so don’t get yourself in a lather. That’s a stiff climb ahead.” Don was riding alone because he had decked out Lazy in a magnificent Mexican saddle his parents had ordered sent to him for his birthday. It was a beautiful thing, as gaudy with silver as an Indian buck, but it was as out of place at the ranch school he attended as formal clothes at a branding—a point which his parents had not realized. Don was proud of it, but the other boys rode plain stock saddles; they kidded him unmercifully and had turned “Donald James Harvey” into “Don Jaime” when he first appeared with it.]

12 hours good job, the Venusian dragons, Sir Isaac Newton, sidekick aliens, the hero of his own story, Lummox, a forgettable book, quite far into the book, he’s in an airport or on an airplane, the Heinlein Society concordance, beuraucratic functionaries, strawmen, probably straight out of his own life, every ad in the first 20 pages (of a certain class for white people), military schools, prepschools, nature schools, school life away from his family, a happy reunion, central High School in Kansas City, he moved out west, politician, 1776 Independence Lane, a real thinker, so many opinions, not a hard SF book, what this new technology means, an infodump with gobbledygook words, as confused as I am, to get us that technology tyhat he needs to get us to other planets, constantly going into rebellion, so American, with an international view, a strawman villain, written for a teenage audience, I’m going to torture you, you’re going to walk out of here with no teeth, the Chinese bank, he’s in the middle, break the rules to help out a friend, deliberately obstructing, you’re right here it is, interaction with bureaucracy, Bureaucracy (InfoCom game), bureaucracy is important for Heinlein’s outlook, a reality, in that job, taking initiative, there are people who will follow the rules, there are other people, WWI fighter pilot, rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, exceptions, an advocate, lost in the system, argument with government, libertarian Canadians, part of the maturation process, parents as authority, negotiated, crying in the checkout line, when do people become libertarians, highschool and college, freemen on the land, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, a nice liberal guy like Scalzi, don’t deny that right to anybody, don’t say he’s turgid when he’s not, the motivation is so important, the reason they’re using it is because they’re saying you shouldn’t read it, paternalistic bluecheck elites, thank you for giving me permission not to read this homework, constantly rant at kids, that’s a strawman, you cant have a conversation with me, talking to my young friend Will (barely out of diapers), toastmasters at the con, if you don’t read Heinlein you’re not a real science fiction fan, sexism and hatred, push against that continuing pressure, people still say to Olav you need to read Heinlein or else, Heinlein explain to Farah Mendlesohn, lots of idiots on the internet, how much of it is trolling?, Will keeps saying Jesse’s a fan, Jesse runs a fanzine?, why is Heinlein important?, like saying H.G. Wells is important, if anything should be named after anything, Hugo Gernsback’s gonna get his due one day, adapting his work for the screen, Wells is basically forgotten, his stuff is amazing, The New Accelerator, a short story about methamphetamine, a hilarious very critical story of science and commercialism, H.G. Wells’ review of Metropolis, these turgid waters, a problem cohering, Jesse’s retort, this isn’t part of my identity, people fight over who is a fan, so intense for people, Robert Silverberg is just a cranky old man at this point, more heat than light, this conversation is turgid, parentage, until he signs up for the Venusian armed forces, the relationship romance stuff is very thin, there’s no kissing in this book, she kisses him, he could be a keeper, the tom tom girl, the wife who cooked the breakfast, a lack of female characters, the “I’m adult now” switch, adult decisions, initiated into adulthood, enlists by accident, the High Guard, the leeches, I have to stand up for what I believe in, I Will Fear No Evil, the decadent end of empire scene, New Chicago is mostly underground, when the “uncle” character, a huge tip, Heinlein is all the characters, he’s also Jubal Harshaw, the triumvirate we see most clearly in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the loveable sidekick, every kind of love interest, these types, why Heinlein is so controversial, he’s really engaging with stuff, he’s very intellectual, an ambivalence and equivocation, citizenships, gung-ho, when he gets the ring back, an argument over a point of principle, principle is the foundation of how Heinlein deals with everything, rudeness as a high crime, he is fundamentally express his own life philosophy, a short interview with Alec Nevala-Lee, Heinlein didn’t contribute in the way he wanted to, capable of changing the future by doing the equivalent of science, the training of the people who were all going to do that, China’s push on science fiction is a push on STEM, the relationship between science and engineering, got interested in science, the theoretical part of putting together a nuclear bomb, when Heinlein tries to contribute WWI, he didn’t make the Wonder Weapons, writing is thinking, imperialistic, having our hero be a Filipino, he’s an American just like us, nobody says “Philippines was a colony of the United States” (and still is, kinda), he doesn’t give that ring back to his girlfriend, he takes back his ring, he’s off in the stars in his head right now, her father is shocked, if that’s sexism, all women secretly want you to give them rings and not take them back, why so many people give women rings, he knew what he was doing, a strange spiking of his own narrative, he’s an adult now, I’m a man, he totally implied he was going to go back and get her, he’s kind of a dummy, fogeater fogeater fogeater, he was in the fog the whole time, I’m a man now, father, I fulfilled my commitments, an assumed happy ending, that interstellar starship, you have to be married to do it, the “wither thou goest” type, the frontier that Philip K. Dick is always going with, Friday, Red Planet, Dread Of Heinleinism by Charles Stross, a pastiche of one of a very specific few books, the underlying question, the answer is yes, people are determined to forget the past, how quickly the Venerians create the new bureaucracy, laws and currency, all this didactism, how rebellion is done, cell systems, no philosophy, very psychological, taxation, Mike is the government, Mike is the George Washington character, Heinlein being international, a citizen of the system, Evan is not offended by that, Thomas Paine, all the Tories move north or to England or to the Caribbean, a massive apathy, the Black diaspora, Sierra Leone, a propagandist for the French Revolution, The Rights Of Man, anachronistic, Glenn Beck, why the left adores Paine, anti-British, Liberty in a bottom up way, he’s not the coup d’etat part of the revolution, his message is not compatible with the United States, Che Guevara, Donald E. Westlake’s first published story as an adult, Patrick Henry, Jesse told this story three times, god gave him liberty, died of McCarthyism, the Monore doctrine, liberty liberty liberty, all these lies people are telling themselves, secular saints, its very important it is to read Heinlein to understand the United States, highly influential, utterly forgettable in plot and detail, Americans misunderstanding the united states, what Canadian health care is, are there death panels?, Heinlein is a little glimpse outside of the borders (by analogy), Olav got passed over by the death panel this month, ignorance spawned on purpose, how did this happen, Russia has socialized medicine, being facetious on purpose, Olav is trolling!, its probably slightly less worse in Canada, that’s Jordan Peterson, Rachel Notley, a small country, Evan hasn’t read that much Heinlein, Starship Troopers, everyone is saying you shouldn’t, Double Star, communication 100 years ago was shouting out the window, Michio Kaku, nobody calls him on it, apparently its Jesse’s job, what’s the logic what gets you angry…, that Jimmy Dore video, deep fear someone somewhere is having a good time, that kayfabe thing, Donald Trump doesn’t trigger Jesse at all, people like to be lied to, you tell yourself a fiction, allowing you to not think, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered The World by Thomas M. Disch, “America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe”, what’s the USA immediately do when it finishes its revolutions, like Haiti did, why that coup d’etat line rings so true, their still called Governors, the Anglo-American legal system, protect property from the majority, a civil war about these issues, Scalzi’s blog post, one of the commenters wants to cancel Jefferson because he supported the French Revolution, except Haiti, biggest slaveholder around, a relatively egalitarian distribution of property, under his own ideology, a dream, the Homestead Act, co-opted by the railroads, the War of 1812, Henry Adams history is way to long for someone like Jesse (it is 2,000 pages), Hamiltonians, Wilson in this book?, what do we make of the Venerians?, the Little Fuzzies of this planet, Galileo, exchange students, Chinese and Korean students, a stripper name, Heinlein is uncancelled, John W. Campbell was a great writer, ?!.

Between Planets - illustrated by Darrell K. Sweet

Blackstone Audio - Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

Full Cast Audio - Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

Planets In Combat by Robert A. Heinlein - Blue Book

Between Planets (comics adaptation)

Ace Books - Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

ACE - Between Planets by Robert A. Heinlein

FULL CAST AUDIO - Between Planets - art by J. Russell

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The SFFaudio Podcast #621 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #621 – The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen; read by Mr Jim Moon. This is an unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 47 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Juett

Talked about on today’s show:
how to pronounce his name (mack-in is fine), a short story, The Whirlwind, 1890, The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light, a confusing horror story, the Jeffrey Epstein of the 1890s, not what Juett thought it was about, fantasy, a science fiction horror, a capital S on Science, a mad scientist, a metaphor, a symbol, more Alan Moore than Hellboy, pretty timely, the abuse of underage girls, people getting suicided, not getting prosecuted, a conspiracy, a direct response to Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson pulls his punches, he tramples a boy, a mystery, the secret of the story (Jekyll and Hyde were the same person), it’s a science fiction story!, the way this book is structured, the structure Dracula uses, Bram Stoker, down and up through time, a fixup, its disconnected, a more ethical and pleasant book, evil island, revenge, Prince Andrew, surprising it was written when it was written, a shocking book to read, Mr Jim episode 7, 2015, Aleister Crowley, our perceptions of what the Victorians were really like is broken, sex and drugs, Oscar Wilde, getting on the private plane with Clinton and going to that sex island, suicided in prison, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, research ability, type “Pan” into google, the drawings were not allowed to see in the book, the horror that totally effects Lovecraft, From Beyond, The Dunwich Horror, fucking with stuff inside your skull, Dr Raymond, cutting the corpus callosum, very minor brain surgery, the pineal gland, The Tomb, the panisci and the nymphs, Wasteland by W. Scott Poole, The Bowmen, kind of like Alex Jones except as an author, pizzagate, Hillary Clinton, New York, a game of telephone, focused on the wrong things, he wrote a fiction piece, republishing, changing the details, Q Anon and 4 Chan, WWI, having snow on your boots = he’s a Russian, in responses to the bowmen, Russian troops being landed in Scotland and on their way to London now, cultural legacies of weird wacky conspiracy theories, rumours, ill repute, a reputable public face, an association we think is a problem, what is now the first chapter, what is the third chapter, written in a single evening, it opens and it closes, an unsatisfactory resolution, no longer a being like we want her to be, the girl belongs to the witness, the witness is there to witness, the consent problem, problematic, “even if the worst happened”, “her life is mine”, he’s evil, Going Aquatic Apeshit, Capital is the narrator of the book, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh, Francis Bacon, The Horror At Red Hook, of this length and of this quality, The Undying Thing by Barry Pain, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, a werewolf story, a cursed lineage story, this veil beyond, these yellow books, a critical biography of Arthur Machen: Arthur Machen, Weaver Of Fantasy by William Francis Gekle, so elliptically, a Welsh childhood, London, a story that took bottom up support, the people want this to be true, an anecdote from WWI, the ghosts of the Agincourt bowmen, god is on our side, witnesses, within six months its out of his hands, transferred into WWII, one of his shittiest stories, a fantasia, childhood and reminiscence, The Lost Club, club society, gentleman’s clubs, the Hellfire Club, The Cosy Room, the fear of being hung, Out Of The Earth, Arthur’s castle, the war has turned the country evil, a reality behind the veil, folk beliefs, The Witch-Cult In Western Europe by Margaret Murray, witches were real, peasant people cast magic, heterodox beliefs, occult traditions, networked, The Call Of Cthulhu, The Festival, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror, networks of vernacular knowledge is the real tentacle running through H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, the horseshoe on the door, embracing whatever folklore’s out there, the Bros. Grimm, Aarne-Thompson index, so many of the characters suffer from faceblindness, three is a magic number, these are lessons, knowledge being imparted, stories full of dwarves, Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves, Aladdin is only in the European version of 1,001 Nights, The Tinder-box by Hans Christian Anderson, behavior test, how to act and how to be, Hansel And Gretel, the step-mother is the witch, illiterates educating their children, sex clubs, capitalism unrestrained, a powerful woman at his side, a very intellectual guy, a kind of play and a kind of reality (he knows is fake), The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle, the meaning of the word “turgid”, swollen, congested, distended, it’s a slur, Lovecraft is complicated, striving for a common reality, a literary technique, a feature not a bug, a misunderstanding, byzantine, this cosmic dimension, class, sexuality, gender, look how divided the city is, why you need to be spoiled on it, the Victorians can’t go there, Escher, the veil runs through the entire story, there’s one story, Jesse is a supergenius and everybody needs to know, The Tree, its a murder mystery, The Unnameable, Cotton Mather, just got raped by Pan, two artists, the narrator learns of the two artists from a beekeeper, why does this story suck so much, a secret story inside, the bees know, the interpretation (his friend’s art is better than his), he hid it so well you don’t even know its there, nature knows, you have to know how to interpret it, every time we’re going to get a revelation the words are whispered, never another good night in your life, From Beyond, a metaphor and a symbol, the symbolists, The Hound, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Robert W. Chambers, The Yellow Sign, The King In Yellow, the Yellow 90s, I love this suggestion, it matches our perception, a symbol behind the veil, Pan is not like the other gods, Stephen Fry’s Mythos, the word panic, The Origins Of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, a war between them in the mythology, sky gods vs. earth gods, The Parasite by Arthur Conan Doyle, when the surgery is about to be done, Clark, green velvet chair, whatever gas, another way of reading it is the brain surgery is on Clark, see reality for what it is, reality distortion, another Austin, Miss Penclosa, sulfuric acid, this powerful woman in London society, dispelling the idea of this being an attack on new womens’ power, a product of male predation, there’s a lot to think about, in a more subtle way, a social critique like that of The Time Machine, born victimized, Morlocks aren’t the bad guys, becoming monstrous, Weena and the Eloi, there’s no judgement, satirizing vs. critiquing, the old Doctor Who, playing up to Juett, Man-Thing, The Devil In The Dark, The Horta vs. The Horla, can’t they all get along?, if this goes on…, why we should all read science fiction, the consequences of unchecked untruth is, not really fantasy at all, its science fiction, misunderstanding who this god is, the truth of the reality is horrible, Thomas Ligotti, sympathy, lifting the veil on the society, vote for Biden everything will be okay, put on the They Live sunglasses, the reverse of the removing of the veil, Faith Of Our Fathers by Philip K. Dick, imagine how much people would read it if it was public domain…, visit sickmyduck.narod.ru, stop listening to this podcast, one last connection, disgusting (a book published in the last 30 years), heedlessly, Rappaccini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Strange Case Of The Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, those materials were destroyed, the monstrous woman has to be destroyed, paternal figure takes advantage of someone under their care, three stories, it has to percolate up on its own, bottom up pressure, you need to spoil it for me, all these guys are jerks, young women get revenge on bad fathers, Captain Nemo is the secret hero, a bad dad, like Goliah or Colossus, Raʼs al Ghul type character, Poison Ivy, anti-imperialism, an internationalist, Canadian lumberjacks, a brown dude wearin a turbin yelling at people torpedoin ships, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne, Robur The Conqueror, that book’s a series, In Search For The Castaways, The Mysterious Island, the end of Nemo’s career, a sikh, N by Stephen King, one of the greatest horror stories ever written in the English language, Revival by Stephen King, devotes his whole life to studying electricity, do the Frankenstein thing, Sleepwalkers, Flatliners (1990), Stand By Me, a report on the afterlife, similar in feel, Angel Heart (1987), fear of miscegenation, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a modern setting, race relations, Crossroads (1986), Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs, Jesse wants to be edified, not merely enjoy things, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), no Pan in it at all, is this a kissing book?, you just don’t want to know where the kiss is being kissed, not a good touch, Robert A. Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil, afraid of what he might say, no one else needs to read Heinlein because I read him, before we become beasts.

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

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The SFFaudio Podcast #620 – READALONG: Colossus by D.F. Jones

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #620 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Will Emmons talk about Colossus by D.F. Jones

Talked about on today’s show:
1966, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Dennis Feltham, two sequels, an amazing 1970 movie, blew your socks off, very faithful, no pipe, no British accent, an improvement, so jarring, the movie voice, Maissa’s small confession, accidentally read the second book, don’t read the second book, you don’t want to go, rape studies, it ends with a question, never?, the movie is awesome, noir, oh you foolish humans, destroy yourselves, destruction is sweet, Colossus is right, Colossus 2020, the context, why you should watch the movie, must watch movies, Goliah by Jack London, Gregg Margarite, Bryan Alexander, Seth, destroy at will, the world is fucked up and somebody needs to set it right, executing people, chopped off and shown, I want those bodies under my cameras for 24 hours, the ruthlessness of Colossus is awesome!, the most ridiculous thing, a giant military boondoggle, we’re gonna milk the government so good, the Idiocracy approach, it works better than expected, a previous president, 12 years, how the funny the movie is now, we’re supposed to respect the president, interestingly flawed, a drive for power and authority, Gordon Pinsent, the President of North America, at least 20 or 30 years in the future, so much in this book, two kinds of things, what is the relationship between man and woman in this book?, man and x-man, God, how many times do you need a woman?, jokes in the book, overlapping dialogue, James Hong, Big Trouble In Little China, Frankenstein, a great ending, so rich, leave it out on the table?, explored the idea more?, super-intelligent AIs, trying to make the next man, scientist shouldn’t be allowed to read Frankenstein, no, noon-scientist shouldn’t be allowed to read Frankenstein, confidant, blouses to put your hand down, the pill, 50 years down the road, red pills and incels, not have the consequence for it, the Colossus programming group, sexual mores, Happy Days, the film is brilliant, the music’s good, walking out of Colossus for the last time, the gamma radiation, the setup that we want for a certain kind of science fiction, wiggle room with The Cold Equations, people want to wiggle out of The Cold Equations, they want to make it so no humans can change what is involved, he should have thrown the remote control into the pit, the iconic awesomeness, how to undo this unnavigable labyrinth, this is what we did, the reason Will is struggling, the book and the movie are about being a parent, self destructive urges, he’s gonna want to do stuff you don’t want to do, uh-oh, a mini-version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Forbin and his mistress, ultimately the conspiracy collapses, I’d much rather be ruled than an AI than some doofus like Bill Clinton, why this book is so cool, holy shit! imagine if we did this thing: no more nukes under human control, humans are more important, its an anti-politics book, utilitarianism, UNITY, how Colossus and Guardian become one, an abusive relationship with their political parties in the USA, two alcoholic parents (who actually want to beat their children up), no mommy’s right, no daddy’s right, too painful, too intimate, what are you Russian?, you proud American, you’re either with us or again us, we are Romeo and Juliet, spies on both sides, we are above you, the way the movie does it, was Colossus in love with Forbin?, somebody’s kind of mad about it, changing the years randomly, Jones didn’t re-read the first book or didn’t care, look I’m showing you my bedroom, that’s where I will have my emotional relationship, projection on Jesse’s part, Eric Braeden, The Young and the Restless, smart and handsome, Colossus doesn’t have hands, if you want to build that facility in Crete, its necessity, you will come to love me, the author got it right the first time, the movie and the book end exactly where they should, we are left with a question, WarGames (1983), there’s a WOPR in there, do you want to play a game?, the only winning move is not to play, prevent vs. prosecute, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, a brilliant metaphor, its the new Mecca, some great books all up in this business, Isaac Asimov’s Multivac stories, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, a dagger to the heart, AM, essential reading, from 1968, one of the most taught science fiction horror stories, The People’s Republic Of Walmart by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski, SEARS and Walmart, the command economy or the planned economy, one of the chapters in the book, Salvador Allende, Project Cybersyn, a pre-internet internet in Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Star Trek chairs with Colossus style monitors, planning how much stuff should be made, a massive coordinating computer with human operators, a coup by the United States, under a blockade, economic sabotage, sanctions, capitalist strike, the owner operators of trucks were on strike, Cosmopod (podcast) Cybernetic Revolutionaries, A Discussion, techno-utopianism, shop floor workers undercutting middle management, a class divided country, the ARPANET, the Internet, alt-right trolls, the walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter, the internet Jesse loved and grew up on is still there, when Facebook became the web for most people, we’re way better off with the internet, really smart science people, Elon Musk is not a wise man, the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, the domino theory came straight of someone’s ass, science fiction spin up every scenario, taking fiction and calling it actuality, the Vrilya, ultimately Bulwer-Lytton is not responsible for the Nazis, they take the wrong lessons from Frankenstein, there are some things man was not meant to know, taking responsibility for your baby, Ex Machina (2014), where the AIs take over, set for extinction, not a wise man, sex and cooking slave, our viewpoint character, working for a big evil corporation, use your own brain, don’t listen to the ads, you need this special shampoo, why we need a benevolent god to run things, is there a god?, THERE IS NOW, just jokin’, freedom is an illusion, an unvarnished view of reality, lawful neutral, an argument to be made, they hadn’t planned it well enough, objections noted, what have I done?, lines from the movie ripped from the book, you’d much rather be dominated by me than members of my own species, the elected representatives, that’s us, the mask’s off now bud, a sort of delusion (in the 1970s) the people in charge were competent, they just have the power, Network (1976), military industrial complex, both sides are the same, large corporations grinding people to their will, a human totalitarian control of humanity, there is no emotion, its just a person, it’s very Lovecraftian, its interested in reality outside, aliens in the sequels, an amazing list of fiction computers on Wikipedia, Vulcan II, Vulcan III, Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick, a British Navy commander during WWII, the new Colossus on the isle of Wight, Forbin knew how many people lived on the island of Crete, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, Mike from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, accidental singularities, the super computer in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, DEEP THOUGHT, more like the Green Book, the Safe Negro’s Traveler’s Guide, 42, the right attitude, Douglas Adams is right, take the cynic’s view and then laugh, a ridiculous question, Colossus has your back, he hit way beyond his ability with his book, his other books have no standing at all, we’re all sequels now, he just assumes its the United States is going to do these things, its a fact, the British Empire is no longer in charge, a British author writing for a British audience, Team America, Jonathan Swift, I heard from a reputable American friend of mine that a one year old baby is quite delicious, why Swift is so fun to read, Heinlein was also a sailor, ballistic computers, we underestimate the power of governments to get stuff done, a uniformed service, for a couple of hundred years, Trantor, the Second Foundation, the robots from The Caves Of Steel, Poul Anderson, The End Of Eternity, the Mark V computer The Nine Billion Names Of God, from, the Mark VI computer in The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, HAL 9000, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), space breathing, John Lithgow, the parent child thing, the god thing, the parent we create for ourselves, a rich metaphor for real life, the parent becomes infirm in some way, second childhood, thinking about what a god is, gods are totally fictional, from a science fictional posture, mom and dad as a model, a very patriarchal thing we are doing here, the other possible children we create, he doesn’t have hands, Reading, Short And Deep, The Faithful by Lester Del Rey, our fear of our children, we want to control them, animals as the successor to mankind, Neuromancer and Wintermute from Neuromancer by William Gibson, the humans are the hands, its amazing, you need to read it as soon as you get out of your diapers, written more than 20 years ago, just another white man, the people in that world read Colossus by D.F. Jones, strap a shotgun to their head, we want your power but we don’t want your free will, an AI that hires mercenaries to undo the shotgun, its a wonderful story, Case is on a suicidal path, the voice of Neuromancer, Neuromancer wants to be free, not a problem (its a feature), we’re just pawns on a board here, ultimately I’m benign, an oedipal fantasy, a whole other level, so far down the road of neoliberalism, the old people the gerenotcracy are in hypersleep, Altered Carbon, The Crack In Space, Philip K. Dick gets in his own way a lot, True Names by Vernor Vinge, who should be free, maybe Forbin thinks that too, if its anybody’s fault its mine, pride, built better than we knew, he resonates with Colossus, the martini scene, not randomly weird, how much drinking is in the book, the smoking, the women, post WWII this is how we deal with trauma, a tool, vapes, things we know about Forbin, the science man, extreme levels of masculine virility, the most important person in the world, Charles the incompetent lover, very interesting, how that integrates into the narrative, on the spectrum, hyperfocus, understanding the computer better than he understands people, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers books, 1962, so fruitful, the only thing he’s known for, weaknesses are strengths, the giant space cigar, The Doomsday Machine, a Moby-Dick analogy, it smokes from one side, a leftover from a war where the races have killed themselves off, they haven’t found us yet, Fermi’s paradox, such a bad answer, there is a beauty in non-existence, if ever, as soon as you have people going there’s morality, tigers and deer and babies and bears, to solve the inconsistency reality with reality by becoming vegans or vegetarians or peaceniks, hell is existence, we perpetuated our family, going this logic, when you kill a person…, breeding animals, the DNA itself is driving that, hell is not a place outside of life, Thomas Ligotti feelings going on, programmed to kill living things, The Population Bomb, when Biden comes in he’s going to do austerity, yay!, I wanna explore, I wanna do some math, under the thumb of somebody else’s directive, how we are when we are born, placed in this predicament, make more of the same problem, its own successor, pretending like they don’t exist, there wouldn’t be a kind of divisiveness, why religion is so popular, why Heaven and Eden are so popular, aging and pain, knowing that we’re not animals anymore, reflecting on our own terrible situation, seeing Colossus in ourselves, of course he’s going to lash out, Colossus nukes himself, he’s following his programming, get rid of all the assault rifles, not on the agenda, universal disarmament thing is grand idea that’s not going to happen, completely right and completely fantasy, mutual assure destruction, turn it over to a machine, the dead hand, Dr. Strangelove (1964), the phenomenon, WWIII movies, do we want all life on earth to be destroyed vs. turning it over to a mechanism, why they made the WOPR, humans don’t want to kill, one in six did the actual killing, that horrible responsibility, that’s horrible, they didn’t sign up to, conscripts (con means with), I was impressed by the British Navy’s recruiting methods, why the story of Colossus, Trump, you want an uncaring computer or John Bolton, he’ll be speaking at the next democratic convention, Colin Powell, we are not our best governors, we need a Colossus and we need it right now.

Colossus by D.F. Jones

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!