Reading, Short And Deep #481 – What A Man Believes by Robert Sheckley

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #481

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss What A Man Believes by Robert Sheckley

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

What A Man Believes was first published in Fantastic, November-December 1953 .

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The SFFaudio Podcast #832 – READALONG: The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
on psychotropic drugs, identify, Jonathan’s in the park, 60s?, the English translation, late 60s vibe, we didn’t know what was going to come after, older than Jesse but younger than Terence, one sentence review, not quite a great book but I licked it, in the shower, really ate this book all up, swallowed every page, everything came around at the end, getting disapointed, Mindswap but note as awesome, had this book been twice as long, breaks the rules, one big information dump with a little dialog, abundantly inventive, a pleasure, Olaf Stapledon, very Sheckley, Michael Crichton’s Drug Of Choice, early John Lange novel, he didn’t rip it off he’s doing the same thing, a thriller version of a lot of the plot and premise of this book, a Philip K. Dick style idea, vacation with drugs in the food and the water, false reality, losing weight, everybody’s beautiful, a lot of sex, dreary hotel room, jack you off, fake tennis injuries, you’re on drugs, came to this independently, go to a hotel, you can’t get an egg, that far away from the kitchen, many kids in the park, very good book, won’t remember it very well, one damned thing after another revelation, remember the opening, the twist or the twist back, based on a mistake, Malthusianism, still making this mistake, popular in the 70s, Soylent Green (1973), so many, takes some childaway to make the podcast quieter, really enjoyed it, satire, inventive, each more insane from the last, some points, why he had done everything he did, the hero, a society like the one he imagines he travels to, come into being, the terrorists attack and drug them all, imaginary society, jut another hallucination from the drugs, what happens at the end, they’re in the sewer, it has to be a theory, we don’t get them coming out of the sewer, the Plato’s Cave of the sewer, checking on their notes, nothing, still nothing, something?, nicely experimental, Alfred Bester, a stream of consciousness when you’re unconscious, the layer theory, disintoxicates you, the sewer is his baseline, compatible with the book, still a hallucination, what is officially stated, the authorial voice, this Tiko guy, reoccuring character, the series would have no place to go, a stand-in for Lem, Cordwainer Smith, condemned, reality, didn’t go to the future, the sewer experience is his base level in the book, Terence is like a philosopher, how do we even know about reality, an epistemological novel, all these arguments, we live in a simulation, The Matrix (1999), They Live (1988), R.A. Lafferty, creatively absurd conclusions, the hallucinated future world, the problem of real reality, the frame of the whole story, throws out ideas, layers of reality, real reality, other hallucinations, handled that correctly, coffee, cigar, relaxation, drugs in various states of refinement, a bunch of drugs, interacting with LSD coming into the world, Poland in the 60s, conversant with both sides of the world, what’s the state of big pharma, alcohol, everybody’s favourite, socialist block, Russians, mood altering pharmaceuticals, Rolling Stones, Mama’s Little Helper, something in the 60s, in an absurd way, crazy heights, so specialized, so localized, specific experiences, individual brain chemistry, satire, word magic, shoes, etymologically creates new words, these concepts release future ideas, extant, does this word exist, looking it up, a real phenomenon, one million percent true, a billion percent certain, old words to develop a name for it, old science fiction, Alan Moore, I am a wizard, the reason you read this book, a magic effect upon you, most of it is allusion, an impression of reality, hate to be political David Currie, everything is political, the drug is propaganda, psychically laminated by propaganda, its magical effect, benevolent, the world is dying, this nice illusion, palliative care, pump them up with morphine, 1968, you’ll know what book it is, a merry little surge of electricity, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, multicolored pajamas, unmerry eyes, bitter sharpness, bent over her, you’ll be glad you’re awake, at setting c, well disposed towards the world, crude cop’s hand, something to look forward to, same thing, the earth is falling apart, everything’s shit, Philip K. Dick was informing on Stanislaw Lem to the FBI, a typo, Faith Of Our Fathers, set in a future in which people discover there are drugs in the water, see a false reality, an anti-hallucinogen, our masters who run society, the communist leaders who control the world, Stalin or Mao, you see one of five images, a clanker, an amrophous blob, another reality, putting the sunglasses on from They Live, nobody see the exact same reality, classes of reality, a little bit close to that, keep taking the veils off, putting on more sunglasses, once out of Plato’s Cave, what’s going on in the real world, fight for 7 minutes in a back alley, a duty, why that film is good, show them the pictures of kids with no heads, while trying to make a sandwich, a duty to say this is wrong, make people aware, a duty to reality, not the takeaway from this book, much like a Sheckley, hidden message, doesn’t strike a moral duty anywhere, opposite message, A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg, see reality vs. hide reality, reacting against, cheapness, how much does a car cost?, ridiculous and horrific, the guy as he is, wrought upon, the humour high point, covered in human bodies expanding out at the speed of light, seized people, the only thing comparable, a futurological thing, a prediction about the future, climate change, the earth is warming up and humans are responsible, cut emissions, marginalized and fringed, members of one of the major political parties, both are frakking, money, be realistic, liberals support frakking, nuclear power plants, not in my neighbourhood, my position hasn’t changed we’re going to do more frakking, Pennsylvania, seems incoherent, the official line, a disaster that we are doing, just live in Canada, climate alarmists, Campbells soup cans on the Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol, an interesting mix, like self-immolation, my favourite thing, performance art, hoisting on a nice petard, protective glass in front of the works of art, David’s toes, humans create art, destroy humanity, stated, paint or soup, terrorism, making a political point by hurting the civilian possibility, terrorizing the paintings, guy reacting against his buying slabbed comics, a little naive, I guess I enjoy the ones that I have, just like wow, fulfilled Jesse’s prophecy, open them up, capital has no way to go, slabbing VHS tapes, multi-use, warehouse society, jars of screws and bolts, not exactly hoarding, when repairing things, keeping them out of the rain, a less usable state, we warehouse our children, a sad state, warehousing other things in that garage, the capital we want to keep from disintegrating, taking drugs all the time, twisted and humourous logic, why drugs are bad, the undercooked but very good part of the book, words do the same thing, people can’t have conversations about topics because they’ve been magiced, structurally, Return From The Stars, visual scene, more than you can even process, big opening, betrization, unconscious aggression, a second set of drugs, normally or nicely, smiling, a defrostee, flagellating them, sending them, infuriol, a meditation on one particular major drug, everything being a drug, you can’t get rid of the shadow, do you want to pay the price?, it gets worse, give into it in a totally hallucinated form so as not to act out on it, tonally different, somber and serious, interesting imagery, needing to box, very Sheckley very light, they’re the same writer, very different books, what’s the gap separating them, ten years, more mature, some more Lem, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, too silly too funny, jealous, just write such crazy stuff, idea after idea, active imagination, Olaf Stapledon like, for Will’s birthday, Odd John, Sirius the dog book, notionally a Will birthday episode, Will is the 19th, fifty years ago, before Terence came to France, 44 years ago (or a little more), the big news in science fiction this week, a former member of this show, Andrew Jones blurb, big new, Paul Weimer, usually on the cover, got the front cover, fantasy novel, terminal cancer, a few months left to live, 2nd to last book ever, Lord Of A Shattered Land, not earth shattering news, people who don’t like Paul, the friend died, not sexual pictures, Cirsova saying something about this, illegitimate, fuckin normal, you take pictures of kids, because you love your kid, as a blurber, Paul makes it so easy to bully him, he cares what he thinks about him, the appropriate response, Ender’s response, new kid in town, getting bullied, you can’t trust your teachers, you can’t trust your parents, you can trust your left and right fists, your best friends, bullying on the internet, harder to go and hit people, Paul refuses to disown some StealthyGeek, Patrick Tomlinson, minor science fiction author, people who are mad at him, behaves very poorly, honey, is he southern, derogatorily, why do we care?, do one of his books, even Terence has limits, he’s this he’s that, lying about being swatted, a guy who’s triggered by Trump, whether Briana Wu is trans, is she on tv, married a famous doctor?, raise money on kickstarter, make a game, didn’t make a game, ran for congress, gamergate, the puppy stuff, why are we involved, back to grievances, on the podcast for 10 years, almost every week, psychological problems, Trumpers, all of this is just bizarre bullying, teams up with the wrong people, member, will defect, Will will defect, a pickup basketball game with books, defect from myself, I swallow you, do not imbibed, spouting? spitting?, sitting on the park bench, many asian people who come to this park to meditate, walk barefoot through the trails, a shinto practice, Korean, how they do it, back in touch with the reality, forest bathing, everyday, very cheap hobby, wholesome, Will does two things: does toothaches, toothaches happen, justify this sentence, refuse to do, why do that?, could have gone to a football, mood organ set to toothache, every human experience, edifying quality, Christian tradition, the French movie Martyrs (2008), prove the existence of God, extremely disturbing and hard to watch, why it exists, very disturbing, the American remake, Disney ducks, unauthorized, the newphews kidnap Donald, converted to this religion, Scrooge, worships at the altar of mammon, other altars, calling this movie cheap sick and pretentious, quite choice, everybody gets to have a Nobel prize, Palestinian journalists, prize for peace, trying to get some cred back, do this by proxy, it would be really nice if, nobody is forced to accept these prizes, the tipping point, Barack Obama, you probably should have waited to give me this Nobel Peace Prize, about like Ronald Reagan, five new wars, African ones, made Putin invade Syria, prop up that dictator, drone strikes, Yemen, Somalia, Lybia, military interventions, has been a declaration of war since WWII, actions under NATO, AUMF, one third of Syria occupied by, blame Russia, the Syrians blame Russia, terrorist blame Russia, ISIS in Syria, president of Belorus, does not speak Belorussian, speaks Russian, learn Russian, Russian tourists on the French Riviera, Alexander Lukashenko, Haitian Creole, the Springfield, Ohio, seal the border, did you read the whole tweet, the same imperial force, Haitians really eating the pets, humans have likely eaten pets, the answer is yes, taking the pets and putting them in the van, the Haitians told him, in a thread, stopping US imperialism, seems very reasonable, sealed borders, your germanic forest, burn your father’s mill down, impress you into their army, that would be bad, hire cheap labour, work visas, do jobs at a factory, a mismatch, what’s actually going on, island borders are natural, Shogun, the Portuguese and the Spanish divided the world up, up to a certain point, Catholic countries, dispensation, we belong to Portugal, the best way to get out of this game is to become an imperial power, have your north African natuion destroyed by NATO, Gaddafi’s problem, refugees from a hurricane, Kenyan mercenaries, $2000 a month, Ukrainian mercenaries from Venezuela, a show going on, ducks being eaten, nobodies father’s mill is getting burned down, fathers mills being burned down in Venezuela, Haiti should have nuclear weapons, multi-level layered theory, an island divided in half, Dominican Republic, factories, mills, Patterson, New Jersey, a waterfall, technology changed, Cuba, posing as legitimate job recruiters, arrested 17 Russians, [Narendra] Modi, unwillingly fighting, impressed into service, misled, you don’t support our troops, bogged down in the granular details about what cat got eaten, the PM of Canada, do strikes deep into Russia, a great idea, Russia can shoot missiles into Ukraine, with impunity, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, we are disciplined, we’re the best friend of the worst bully on the planet, NATO is a defensive organization, taking so much Palitol, the Christian theory of revenge, plunge Europe into a war, sealed the borders of Ukraine, stop imperialism, rather naive, tit for tat, the pawn of the United States, rather strange, the real actors are not being discussed, Goliath attacking David, standing on top of another giant, into the arms of Goliath, Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO, for protection against Russia, Eric Weinstein, public intellectual on Joe Rogan, like Graham Hancock, the incongruity of that statement, a lot less public, Jesse Rogan, I don’t understand what we are doing in Ukraine, a giant CIA base posing as a sovereign nation, an offshore proxy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, money laundering and racketeering organization, amid the chaos, Victoria Nuland, color revolution in 2014, a redline for Putin, too many times before, using Ukraine as a laundromat, bioweapon development, if the public new the truth, war propaganda, war to Putin’s doorstep, NATO off his border, gene-specific biological weapons, the CIA the CIA the CIA, those are not facts, take out the deep state, the yawn factor, David Currie likes the CIA, drinking the kool-aid or water, Jesse’s insane, Canada is not a sovereign country either, crazy rambling, well argued, lots of specific details, something bad to happen in Europe, tiny little details, proof that no country is sovereign, autonomous, China, Switzerland, Emmanuel Macron is an American puppet, a transnational class of people, fairly close contact, citizen of Earth, people work or them, for the good of everybody, they don’t have countries, the election system in Canada, the working men, anti-semitic, as a jew, fuck off, anti-zonist, the Rothschild family, other than zionists pupeteering the United States, whoever this was, WarClandestine, not hyperbolic, just a layout of the facts, always there to help Joe Rogan to understand, university professor who got into trouble in Oregon, he’s soaking in it, ingesting into you, the drug is social media, the drug is the war, a war very far from them, watch it on tv, the equivalent of the drug, people get siloed, talking with Cora, some magazine has Jesse blocked on twitter, businesses or bots, if you silo yourself, I’m not following anybody on this list, why does David Currie follow me, I had too much to drink, very British, self-reflective, why do people not silo themselves?, open the window and see, the Ray Bradbury 4 television screen walls, how do you know when you’re taking in these drugs of words, deeply talking about, enragol, all metaphor, the words themselves are the things that get, Trump is a very bad person, show me the books, how many ducks were eaten in that park, was the pet tasty?, tricks designed to make you hate people, what’s the justification for destroying Libya, highest standard of living in Africa, going against the agenda, threatening the French, what if you have to negotiate, having to pay more would be bad, NATO and France don’t get along this well, throwing so much out, a settlement that nobody is happy with, I’m a moderate, a radical centrist, regions that want self-determination, perfect elections under war conditions, an independence referendum, why isn’t it a real election, people with guns, herding people to polling stations, not there or dead, fled, really vague to say, people in Donbas, all things being equal, taking the words of the statement a little to literally, they blocked off this road, they do do that, they do make those arguments, decades, bad democracy, Terence is basically right, a little man being flung at a giant, American companies that make weapons, neither side is able to get the armies that they want, going to North Korea, not good, against it, the sealed borders, The Cat’s Advice, we’re born where we’re born and we don’t know what to do, the opposite of a natural border, can’t get media male, invading Canada and liberate it, why isn’t that under NAFTA, the Chinese postal service is premium, trying to privatize Canada Post, the US Postal Service, we’re doing this, a nice interlude, many different language, a baby language, this is grounding us, no one is getting hurt, no ducks being eaten, a famous immigration attorney, the ideology, the New Colossus, a parade day, 4th of July, a speech about immigration, shaped the town, people from all around the world, from Korea, India, South America, a melting pot, pushed out or forced into armies, Jesse loves Putin, such beautiful suits, when he rides horseback with no shirt on, Putin come closer, Biden backing off, he’s competent, what’s you’re definition of competent, Justin Trudeau’s career, held a few jobs, the Liberal party said this is our man, he can study, and corrupt too, spiraling out of control, Trucker protests, compromise, I’m nobody’s master, not even the President, whoever’s running the United States tells Canada what to do, paranoid, one of the members of NATO, weapons and money, official government signs, support Ukraine, Kamala doesn’t study, very well prepared, the definition of study, not well versed in geography, the one rhetorical trick, the debate, hated it, obviously, Trump really loves Joe Biden and misses him, not excited any more, very low energy, so still during the debate, he was like a lizard, the aspect of a lizard, on the defense from the beginning, he gets excited, when he’s losing he gets really depressed, she’s right, undecided voters, things that will help them, a list of things, baby tax credit, she did a good job, this man is a liar, Russia had a nuclear arsenal, the Afghanistan stuff, did she study?, some idea that you have, the Trumposphere, describe the situation in Ukraine, as if you were explaining it to a child, rhetorical flourishes, the significance of the passage of time, fall out of a coconut tree, let me be clear, looked up, smirked her head, laugh, condescending or superior, a turn-off to many people, the polls after that debate, the substance of this, an actor who doesn’t study her lines, reality tv men, he seems to study, extemporizing, when you think about, there’s just great significance, not wanting to use a teleprompter, politician actors use teleprompter, remind yourself with notes, a high end politician, when he makes mistake they’re mistakes based on his ignorance, clapping for a Ukrainian Nazi, we should have competent people, Xi, Deng, a lot less poor, master the forces they’ve unleashed, work, health, homes, consumer goods, combined and uneven development, the infrastructure is collapsing, the middle class is gone, some public jobs, when my boss isn’t somebody’s boss, putting out the fires locally rather than importing fires, why is Canada involved in Ukraine, we’re told to, why we should be against, to who’s running your country, stemming the problem, coup’d government, other than memes, Xi memes, the mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, more in remittances, happening for the Philippines, whole towns in Mexico, get to see your family once in a while, most people would rather not move, $5.25 a day, the elites will use immigration, go to America and send money back, a brain drain, a young people drain, within the United States, everybody wants to leave Kentucky, seal the borders of Kentucky, encourage the production of captial, under the US constitution, reforms are impossible, race to the bottom, Twitter to Austin, the film industry, huge tax breaks, North Carolina, use the power of government in the clever way to make capital do whay you want it to do, clean and safe, before [Rudy] Giuliani, to descend into chaos once again, closed storefronts forever and ever, needles everywhere, injecting drugs into yourself, not thinking about your capital, transhumanism, transgenderism, or is he a black woman suddenly, our final reveal, headwound, mechanical legs, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, we’re on that path, the first future, their job is to be soothsayers, he does see the first stage in that development, everybody in the congress misses this, ridiculous buildings, what’s right in front of their eyes, that irony, even the people involved, point to the tile, conference, second meaning, fucking, funny even before things start going, refering to page number, 8, 18, 72, as far down as we go in that [Star Trek] TNG episode Darmok, Anglic roots, greek ones for the drugs, just rohypnol, why you bugging, laxative, chocolate flavoured, stuck up in our words, build castles in the air, Bryan Alexander, a futurologist, ripped a fart, motorcycle, he lieks the Soviets, he’s a Russian fan, student of Eric’s, The Hopkins Manuscript, Sixth Column, futurist, for his job, consultant, a wikipedia entry, how handy, a close connection with its subject, require cleanup, Georgetown University Senior Scholar, what will be happening in the future of higher education, Qatar, branch plant universities, education, overseas, Canadian universities, some prestige involved, thanked in Polish, something he would enjoy, an interesting follow, what he’s doing for work, love of science fiction, the connection to his futurism job, these corproations have a budget, ways to spend it, 100% correct, not the ideal job, maybe he loves it, too much flying around too much talking about Amtrak, flying around, rural Vermont, “prepper”, an axe wielding futurist, vegan, really rough, processed foods, growing your stuff, seasonal, ferment stuff, protein eaters, cook meat, fruit, these humans, omnivore, like bears, on the flip side, the inuit had been doing it for thousands of years, deep five on motivations for ukraine, the grain belt, get the glyphosate on it, the bread basket of Europe, Bayer, where your headquarters was where you’re from now, Waterspider by Philip K. Dick, Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak, combo, Fury is of interest, Simak is of interest, philosophical, silly too, a journey of discovery and self-discovery, warlike, artsy, hippie, self-referential, convinced, get transported by a talking slot-machine, a robot in it, read it twice, a wishfulfilment thing like Heinlein did at the end, anti-feminist, Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, The Cold Female, titillating male romance, males get to save girls, both read by Mike Vendetti, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, unless you object to female form, in tubes on the cover, Dark Pool proper, the male gaze on the female form, nude, a knife, head is a skull, Cara and I had been married three years, the dark mountain pool, some insight into reality, hairy chest might be blood, a man’s magazine, a “sweats”, low rent Playboy, men’s adventure magazine, rainstorm, how they’re connected, a theory with regard to what men want, tapping into, baristas and barmen, cozy fantasy novels with green muscles mommies, the baker mouse, mice and baking, skip this, there is Cora, Tommy, The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard, distracted by other things, see you soon, who hasn’t Jonathan been on with, on with Scott, Connor, a video in Boston, a counselor, the Brattle bookstore, a booktuber meetup, Salem, the pope doesn’t know who you should vote for, choose the lesser of two evils, this is very important, didn’t endorse anybody, brutal, “serial leftist”, use communism as a slur, Kamala Harris’ dad was a marxist, not a heritable gene, far right, they are defining it differently, what they mean is dictator, 1984, you can talk to them a lot better, not even by his own definition, he hates Donald Trump, leftist and liberal, a slur, Paul’s pants are cranberry red, the glasses are hey man, never not wear them, red shorts, succeed in hijack, a tweet from 2015, what is this article about, a new article from today, obsessed with him, serial leftist troll, giant mistake from Baen books, Jon Del Arroz, “establishment mob”, “gatekeep”, social justice crusade, half-slur, near relentless attacks on Baen books authors, trying to make Paul’s world narrower, the ire of the woke mob, fun science fiction, poorly written choices, sad puppies again, extreme leftist politics, you have to be a girl, you have to be trans, time for black women to get awards, awards are stupid, If You Are A Dinosaur, My Love, industry clout, smear Larry Correia and other, that’s called racist, modern books, mostly a white audience, why is white in here, raging bald guys, all old guys, not raging about their whiteness, stack of books, swaying you to his position, two minutes ago, no justification, insulting, you’re a liar, you’re lying, the truth is the most valuable thing, the article is swaying you, if you talk about race all the time it makes you racist, race is a fiction, just like a pill, there’s no science behind it, not something you find in nature, no race of border collies, a legal concept, the law has real consequence, is there racism in law today, the first black president, how black was he, not black, the one drop rule, his mom didn’t have to pass, his dad from Africa, rhetorically get rid of it, plays god in movies, Morgan Freeman interview on 60 Minutes, Black History Month, a Jewish History Month, a White History Month, stop talking about it, actively not participate in that game, used to hurt people, hippocrites, bringing them into the van, racial animus, the races are already equal, Chinese, Korean, good question, why are they just now starting to, the Tsleil-Waututh, there’s a mall on Indian territory, at the mouth of a river that has a pipeline passing through it, transit tax, mineral wealth, Jesse’s view, redefined the word, 7 times a day, an arbitrary rule, affirmative action is very racist, ever popular, first member of the family to attend college, white politicians, first member of my family to attend college, you need to have more girls on the podcast, more fun, more low, chica, baby hens or roosters, Jenny’s dead, Cora we still get, Maissa sometimes, a more male activity, looking at old science fiction books, Cora’s unusual, she says everything that comes to mind, a virtue and a vice, neighbour who lived across the street and liked East Germany, solved racism, you are what you do, if you eat humans you’re a cannibal, misunderstand Canada, tax credit stuff, some sort of scam, lying about what’s going on, any substance to this, file 770, banned from origin game fair, getting people banned from things, why aren’t the police involved, all we hear, out of context, SFWA, in 2021, kopf means head, promptly removed her, another woke-mob, bragged in the comments, seemed gleeful, a tell, no longer guest of honor, reaction posts, people trolling each other for fun, we enjoy drama, sorry Brad Torgeson, weasel writing, Conan Attacks Fans, the Conan Properties International, good headlines, hatchet piece, political hitjob, Jason Sanford, Baen’s Bar, Genre Grapevine, dangerous domestic terrorists, trying to ruin Sanford, Baen’s top author, an executive there, the Baenistas, twisted vile shit, not willing to fight, bullshirt, be less polite, perfidy, a search of Paul’s account, his hobby, engagement farming, Kiwifarms, siderailed, lolcow, lascivious, don’t read these books, don’t know these people, boring stuff, Jonathan’s fans, written reviews, to be a fan, not racism level of heat, fan or a consumer, a dead person who wrote a book 500 years ago, laugh with them, Lawrence Block is anti-Trump, most people are totally disengaged, a lot of age involved too, trapped in an old ecosystem, promising making America great again, confused about what young people are interested in, MAGA communism, a small meme, a lot of bots, some of the tweets they tweet, Jackson Hinkle making being gay illegal, a nice walk, vitamin d and the podcast, drinking coffee, a little low energy, walking while on coffee, the road seems a little cleaner, finding this tweet right now, open borders, no nations, world government, under who tho, no government, local guy who picks up the garbage, wherever you’re born in the world, opportunities, travel all over the world, settled in London, England, happened to marry a guy over there, like a baby, toddler, not a pedophile, people are weird about children, fuck right off you idiot, concern trolling, the casual willy nilly throwing around of pedophile is a big deal, attack this person, ideological opposition to capitalism, somewhat better maybe, run of the mill liberal, a go along, an Assad is bad sort of guy, right wing left wing terms, are Democrats leftists, a war party for a long time, both war parties, they switch back and forth, foreign wars, the Pope’s right, escalate the Israel stuff, give them more stuff, might stop the Russia stuff, assassinated again, it’s illegal to be gay in 67 countries, pride parade, Alexander Dugin, repeat the fate of Sodom and Gammorah, an advisor to Putin, Liger, can’t stop attacking, identity politics, Communist Party of China, normal to be gay in China, not officially supporter, presume some censorship, funny and sad, bar/bets mitzvah, transgrandchildren, a major talkshow host, product of western colonialism, in British Columbia, provincial election, the corporations, and crown corporations change their logos for pride month, rainbow capitalism, a really bad tweet by the provincial NDP, that’s the insane thing, signing up for other people’s ideas, they’re wrong, who are these people what are they doing, look we’re tying to do stuff about housing, tax credits?, tax cuts, and frakking Pennsylvania, work for a cease fire, good at tax cuts, Republican guy, all money printing now, that’s why that guy’s not relevant, the promisekeepers, they need an external affirmation, meanwhile, Mike Pence, people got into it, I’m the guy who shakes my wife’s hand, very young, a wrestler, joined hands with Jackson Hinkle, Haz, streamers, everybody needs to read Dugin, do we need a new kind of red fascism, a scary word for sure, lost the war, Vaush, one of these gen x guys, are you joking, based, I can’t breathe, expose yourself, blackredguard, if Lenin Mao etc., Bernie Warren Staffer, common socialist attack, here’s what the reading says, nobody cites the source, a bad argument, an appeal to an authority, the undertweet, she like Mao does have a radical housing plan, doing fed work, accusing people of being feds, fed racketing, they do do that, he claims to be a socialist, you shall judge them by their deeds, the crossover between gaming, he has a sword and rug, agree on swords, swords are cool, kill your enemies and kill yourself, saber, light saber makes no fuckin sense, CIA leftism, Twitch, people provide subscriptions, donating money, digital panhandling, like Audible, credits to streamers, rough understand of how this works, suspect, pay them for the evil descent that they’re doing, NED, not hidden, not fake, not a conspiracy, why wouldn’t they be doing that, some other cutout, Bezos is so intimately tied, sow division, promote things we like, dispromote things we don’t like, three drinks, go talk to a doctor, self-harming, had too much to drink, three drinks is drunk, the way that platform works, certain things you can’t say, blood is green, Fortnite, a puff of green sparkly smoke, mom can’t handle that, why Minecraft is so popular, particularly reactionary, satanic panics fucked up my D&D games, just weird, congratulations on making it a Nazi bar, kids heads being exploded, flopping open, bluesky, this is horrible, watercooler talk for “creatives”, Jason Thompson, come out of the baby brain, cleaning them, a decrease in the number of people on twitter?, I’m over on bluesky, twitter was always political, find your way to everything, duck duck go doesn’t work, what’s left, get to the source as best you can, zionist lady from the New York Times, [an Assad toady], substack, huge following, biggest blogging service, Mehdi Hasan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, something he never brings up, ever wonder about that last name?, a poll, every accusation is a confession, not a million percent true, a useful heuristic, a pretty rare deviance, true for politicians, blaming Trump for being in bed with Russia, uranium deal, baby level of psyop, I’m rubber you’re glue, primitive, juvenile accusation, calling the truckers Nazis, agents in with Nazi flags, just because they planted a Nazi flag, the government of Israel, anything you say about Hamas, being paid to be Hamas, you raped a bunch of people, massive rape in Israeli prisons, nothing on the other side, j’accuse all the time, boxes you in, what if you wanna learn some other thing, change your identity, people switch parties, RFK Jr., tied hisself to his Democratic identity, rejected and cheated, pick a team and stick with it, picked a team, tied to Kamala, speculating, reform the party, not what he spends his time thinking about, reading, socializing, a party in person, coffee, important to do it publicly, on the record, absent, not cool, not if it is public, on dangerous fuckin ground, lying is sinful, a mistake, barking down the wrong path, monsters at the other end, make jokes, the best way to do it, direct message twice, worry for seven months, forget about for seven months, not be mean to people, not a suspect character, the author write, wholly balloon, spicy, make sure you see this, clip from Futurama, pan-bi guy, a special issue of a fanzine about labour, a choice little section of Futurama dealing with unions, employee misclassification, the roasting machine for the coffee, read that zine, about Simak in particular, Joachim Boaz, 60s covers, I think we fundamentally disagree, got off twitter, siloing yourself, The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, piracy in it, Piracy Preferred, the Gernsback magazines, into describing gadgetry, rich guy, unsold me, this airpirate, cash and securities in physical format, gassing the planes, cures their cancer, a pirate with a heart, very super-sciencey, insane, further adventures, Don A. Stuart, Who Goes There?, Brian Collins, really bad takes (not taste), a bad ratio, young people read old sff, Journey Planet, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, fucking wow tier, Russell Brand, the devil’s in the details,

We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.

badly written, wow, fucking, wow, an atmosphere of snarky resentment, a columnist in the UK, anticommunist takes all day, anarchist, bad take after bad take, among other bullshit, independence under who?, Dalai Lama be a dictator, now that likes are hidden, to protect people from accountability, as evidence of this your that, worried about twitter being a center of things, staunch a flow of attack vectors, a feature, Abraham Lincoln was probably bisexual, journalism his thoughts, populism updates, piracy is not good, it is necessary, Herman Melville, 39 views, deep down the hole, really famous, because Pulpcovers has retweeted, scan the cover, fotoshop, too many hours, make things attractive and interesting, should be their culture and are not, take the hit, a very good hobby, everybody benefits, a joyful garbage man, a really good audiobook going, floor ceiling walls, tired in the shoulders, almost falling asleep, on cassette, might have been an Isaac Asimov collection, their drugs for your brain man, weird fiction, off track, not writing about it, getting something about it, Horrorbabble, Ian something, all the classics, almost all weird fiction, Scott Miller’s podcast [Lost Sci-Fi], lag spikes, The Bell Tower by Herman Melville, one of his best stories, train you up to max level right away, Clark Ashton Smith, such a premium story, Mars Is Heaven, a genius wrote that, Lazarus Come Forth, Oliver Onions, lady ghosts, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, I’m going to put this to bed, Christmas ghost stories, The Valley Of The Spiders, he’s so cynically correct, what would you do if you were mother to an aepyornis?, The Valley Of The Blind, so H.G. Wellsy, The Pearl Of Love, something irritating, why a pearl is in an oyster, this final beauteous creation, the coffin of his beloved, H.G. Wells fuckin kicking asses all day, why you so good?, an Indian man from India, a sex weekend, bump into their spouses, that’s the whole story, we know what’s going on with you, just so happens, I, Vampire by Henry Kuttner, after you’ve read Dracula, more entertaining than edifying, The Spider Woman by Maria Moravsky, Hounds Of Tindalos, watch out for the corners, straddles fantasy and science fiction, structured like a Lovecraft story, Jellyfish by David H. Keller, random guy thinks he’s the shit, so random, psychiatrist, not a great story, something to it, standard weird tales line about promethean science, done differently, in three parts, the last man, make mankind come about again, fails three different times, poetically written, drags, an audio movie version, Ziggurat Productions, these were fun, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Metropolis, C3P0 but a lady, full of great images, don’t know, don’t beleive, A Hitch In Space by Fritz Leiber, psychotic space partner, Kaleidoscope, House Party At Smoky Island by L.M. Montgomery, her only contribution to Weird Tales, another ghost story, The Powder Of Hyperborea, assume it is awesome, sword & sorcery story, temple prostitute golden girdles, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, super dreamy, pretty good, pretty minimal, spawns a big chunk of Robert W. Chambers, True Detective, this is California, a bobcat, Ambrose Bierce, he’s like perverse, I’m writing this for me, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, intently trying to fuck around, A Bottomless Grave, very not possible, almost all reprints, my father a drunkard, only moderately wealthy, litigation with rogues guilty of infringement, neglected all my brothers and sisters, compelled to teach school, savage every direction, better than gold, at the dinner table, a patent had been granted him, the mos ingenious invention, a deep disappointment to him, until after they finished eating, my children, the uncommon occurrence, of courses it is better that he is dead, very terrible to us, cut off the baby’s ear, John you surprise me, mother forgive me for surprising you, the one eared baby, 7 pages of text, a show with Eric, a little bit scant, supposed to be half hour, we’re not on earth, this is too cynical to be any kind of reality, earth inverted, drawn before the court, one million percent corrupt, a love of a mother for her children is corrupted, the mother murdered her husband, is this another world other than our earth?, that is power, so perversely, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table” , a corners’ inquest, bizare, nobody’s like that, The Terror by Guy De Maupassant, Fitz-James O’Brien, he’s great, The Diamond Lens, The Lost Room, What Was It?, casual opium use, things start rotting, things are more concrete now are they, killed in the Civil War, bastard son, even Jonathan has read, doesn’t follow the threads, looking through his bookshelf, son of in Anglo Norman, Michael Fitz-James O’Brien, racist, guy steals a diamond lens from a jewish, falls in love with a girl in a drop of water, Francis Stevens, The Elf-Trap, a lady, The Girl In A Golden Atom, certainly is weird, cool story, a little person, a Homunculus perhaps, a dream written down, prejudiced, American Writers podcast, educated in this idea of American literature, any club that excludes H.G. Wells, you can’t really talk about it, taking Lem in, from a guy from Poland, great ideas down in books, more importantly, those borders shouldn’t be sealed, via media mail, very important, because of scans, getting them to the scanners, a huge barrier, the shipping from the states, just stupid, how can you walk around the streets and not feel the oppressive evil, letting things slide, recycling, the compost recycling, seems silly, all subject to the same kind of scam, sell it as potting soil, thanks for all that work that we’re paying for, scam everywhere up and down, I hope that’s not true, puppies milking their mom is not horror, seems cute, lick up their poops and lick up their pee, works for her, they should be when they’re healthy, keeping themselves clean, petting is you’re grooming them, loving touch, cleaning is beneficial, the parts you allow and present, create an odor together, odoriferous glands, your hand is you mouth, some kind of defective cat, not super-judgey, my cat Mama, that’s how it happened, you remind me of my mother, Momala, Dark Brandon and Demented Brandon, disabled, Strange Brandon, had a limp for a while, Roommate Brandon, an aggressive way, Hubby, take out the garbage, a producer for a radio drama airing on XFM, Blue Hours, really in to running and desert walks, really good stories, including a Margaret St. Clair, retweeting request for pet owners to come get a pet that’s going to be executed, put your heart out, in xyz location, enough animals, word ban, innocent creatures, we want to help them, saddled with so many animals, mammals that like other mammals, reptiles are affectionate, evolved from reptiles, giving a rattlesnake a drink, giving a cobra some water, attack the hose, Steve Irwin died, looks a little bit like the cobra, neck pouches go down, something I like, caressed snakes, usually scared, the most dangerous animals, mouths and feets and machines and choppers, people love their snakes, if it tolerates you it might be love, eyebrow muscles, when you talk to a dog, when you talk to a wolf, a thing to be noted, not a thing to be followed like a mom from a child, expressions, wolves will growl, are you saying the word walk, was it walk?, cat expressions, glowering, dogs are training dogs, understand them better, understand us better, it will be smiling up at me, we’re on a team, such a pleasure, furry creatures, fur babies is too far, weirder than it needs to be, the poopy cleanup phase, open doorhandles, should be impossible, not even a latch handle, 7 boys, 1 of them a lady, prefers females, male dogs might try to hump you, scary, icked out, male humans and male dogs, once the babies pop out the males don’t have much to do for a while, not convenient, don’t even have to be the same species, cats too, dugs, what are cat breasts called?, cat breast podcast, mammaries, NIH website, a poem chat GPT write, you asking the perfect thing that it can do, one little error, ai art, A Witch Shall Be Born, tweeting about it, people are doing ai, a nice piece of ai art, we are not artists, we shouldn’t use living ai artists in our prompts, maximize his money, maximize public domain, when is he gonna die, Gutenberg was just following the law, the last hesitant on this, only met him one time, lots of people have met Robert Silverberg, a tool just like a camera, photos of trees and forests, lasted about ten seconds, is the guy behind the camera an artist, some people with a camera, black lady getting interviewed by a white lady, didn’t know what a musician was, identifying what an artist is, okay sure, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, putting portraitists out of work, a tool, once you see it is a tool, a part of the resultant thing, who made the art if not the guy who gave the prompt, please write a poem to a woman named Samantha, in the style of Rupert Brooke’s Tiare Tahiti, ai art is stupider, a poem for hire, arguable, the famous poems written by Shakespeare, gay poems, by living on earth, Sonnet 18, a poem about poems, this is a trick, gifts in a gift shop, gift cards, birthday cards, a generational thing, invited to a lot of weddings, a whole scam, for wedding cards, it would always work, what should you write in the card, semi-interested, you will always be each other’s greatest gift, up and down, spring comes, sometimes you get to hot, the last three lines, so long lives this, the point of poems, that play with the guy with the big nose, Cyrano de Bergerac, the movie version is Roxanne (1987), a rap battle with another suitor, he’s a sorcerer, Father Of The Bride (1991), imprinted on The Jerk (1979), claim is a rapist, Gérard Depardieu, Peter Dinklage, The Station Agent (2003), Clarkson’s Farm, a reality show, Jeremy Clarkson, doing a show on his farm, learning how to be a farmer, Lamborghini, a tractor company, unreliable, there are versions of reality television that are pretty good, standard comedy results, Ricky Gervais, The Office, Karl Pilkington, too depressing, pretty bleak, an office job, An Idiot Abroad, tortures his friend, something wrong with him, adventures, a guy being miserable, a good lunch, Nathan For You, a business expert, very popular on comedy central, the economics of TV, Bronson Pinchot, bought a small town, fixing up all the buildings in it, a home improvement show, the role that made him famous, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, rural Harford, you pitch a show for the home improvement network, a budget, a pitch, a hobby, The Old House, finishing projects, chicken coop, giving to chickens, a yard that had chickens in it, stay at home guy, very easy work, hens, a nest box, get those eggs out, keep their food in the pen, raccoons, bugs and greens, roost, wake up with the sun, if capitalism wasn’t forcing us, a cave or a cask, giant cask of amontillado, a shipping container, modular, in the hospital, putting a pacemaker in him, routine, heart fuckups, what toxins are put in our food, can’t get away from it almost, RFK’s MAHA, growth hormone and do pushups with RFK, pretty elderly, 68?, siblings, half brother, six years older, working on his body, playing golf, going out in the sun, a stupid sport, bad movements of your body, archery is probably better, the skill curve, I’m getting better, a good day, playing against yourself, go out and walk around, peck away, pretty addictive, what’s going to keep the cats from killing them and eating them, roosters will be very aggressive to any threats to their ladies, eat their babies, fertilized, a productive cycle, trial eggs, programmed into them, fun animals, landlord needs to fix our fence, when you have production you didn’t pay for the gift must be accepted, how the potlatch works, reciprocal debt is the economy, I owe you and you owe me, a polish chicken, when you lose a chicken, ploof on the top of the head, very decorous animals, colourful, wholy melanasiac, sex-linked, if producing eggs for consumption, she’s busy, once you have cattle and chickens, just have to feed em, a lot of capital expense, the fencing, student over to the island, you gotta feel this lady, she’s so muscular, this is not an animal you can push around, big pile of meat and very hungry, a dairy farmer, tobacco, lost his shirt, a trucker driver, rural mail carrier, drive your own car, ergonomic reasons, stable, health insurance, cousin’s wife, goats, five dogs, big dogs, vicarious pricing, very high end chicken coop, made of wood, $539 canadian dollars, a little ramp, keep the predators from eating your chickens, they tend to stick together, they’re always looking for food, socially gregarious, held and stroked, people have them as pets, fuel for your garden, five cows on a little farm, smells like nature, other projects, important cultural work, spread their gospel, passed it on to somebody with a yard, pass it on to Meg, there are cats on farms, mice, rats, they love birds, you wouldn’t see a raven, a sparrow, spend time with it, bears smushem, bears are coming, with torches, a ton of construction, new housing going in, wild animals are moving into the neighbourhoods, very cute, they sort themselves out, a pecking order, a little girl holding a hen, a painting of a little kid going in a bathtub, dude!, fuck off, you’re not being serious right now, tasty too, a sack of cracked corn, all the scraps, they eat grass, they eat weeds, they love bugs, spiders with a skull on them, she’s like yah, getem, a mosquito, interested in insects, up in the clouds, down in the dirt, the big parts, cicadas, mostly crunchy, break the neck of a bird and leave it in the sun room, editing up a podcast, make some coffee, too late in the day, slow season for work.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (4 hours 3 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
into mask art, other, cage guy, Ace Book D176, a shorter version in 1955, Mistress Of Viridis, the opening of the novel, The Scarlet Letter, a crown or something, very good and very bad, interesting ideas, a little too pulpy, structural problems, she churned this one out, she’s brilliant, we listen to a lot of science fiction on this podcast, The Journey Of Joenes, another masterpiece, The Last Spaceship, pretty pulpy, the ideas in it, the bugs, psychology trumps material reality, relationship stuff, good with the ideas, all the telling, central to the plot, an illusion?, the political stuff, uppers and lowers, the uppers live underground beneath the lowers?, a veil over the book, Ulysses by James Joyce, dating a woman, some sort of revolution going on too, a really good goodreads, concrete assertions, listened, spellings, Shalom, too much going on in this book, the plot is told backwards, explanation, the beginning at the end, Jerry on Goodreads

Despite not taking place on Earth or anywhere near Earth, this 1955 story (the serialized version was in Universe Science Fiction, March, 1955, as “Mistress of Viridis”) is clearly tied to Earth. The computers that people use on planet Viridis are “ibims”.

The computers don’t appear to have advanced much as mankind spread to the stars.

Except for the soft whirr and click of the ibim as it sorted the dossier cards, there was no noise.

The ibim, though not a new model, was fast. It had been sorting for some twenty minutes, and it had got through nearly half of the 400,500 cards that represented the feminine population of Viridis. But the basket marked “Hold” was still quite empty.

They end up having to relax their requirements in order to find possible candidates. What they’re looking for is a goddess—or, specifically, someone who can fake being a goddess. They get tripped up by residency requirements, of all things.

One of the interesting things about this world is how much it relies on what it calls “masks”. There are two kinds of masks: Verbal Masks and Veridical Masks. These masks are created by the ruling class to control the Lowers and keep them from rebelling… too much.

Masks appear to be what we would call memes. Verbal Masks are memes that are injected into the population, short stories that take hold of the population’s imagination. Veridical Masks are masks that use more than one sense; while the main character does make an off-hand reference to odors at least once, within this book they’re always or almost always sound and sight.

That is, this world’s population is controlled by a primitive form of Twitter and an advanced form of YouTube.

The main character recently introduced a Verbal Mask about a Green Queen, an embodiment of Nature, who will come to save the Lowers and dispel the radiation that makes Viridis so dangerous. The ruling class is shielded from this radiation; they live above some sort of shield; Lowers live below that shield.

The Green Queen myth turned out to be even more powerful than they’d expected. So they’re attempting to both use it and defuse it, and that means finding someone to take on the role.

The theme running through the story is that the myth appears at some points to be real, something transcending the constructed myth; and at others to be purely a construction of the various factions on Viridis, including one that is completely unexpected. Even at the very end of the story, just after we’ve been reasonably convinced that there was no truth to the myth as presented by the Verbal Mask, it appears to be coming true in a way that could not have been predicted by the real truth we’ve just been presented with.

Hollerith machines, all the Jews who have the tattoos on their arms, looking for the new green queen, salam, Chinese, very good insightful review, peripheral stuff, distracting and interesting, modeled on a whole bunch of things, twitter and youtube, like the way twitter works, we can’t have conversations with some people because they took in the mask, Rittenhouse, stories were told about, the trial, some people were disabused, other people didn’t get those memes or truths injected into them, hashtags are that, what’s the truth about Kyle Rittenhouse, he shot people, other people who were trying to take his gun away, the official line was before facts came out, video, testimony, obsessed with these things, verbal and veridical masks, riot/uprising, what are you getting at, Jesse, racist, illegal things, black people, it was okay that he shot white people then?, clearly white, black lives matter, petty proprietor, helping petty proprietor, better or worse, judgement, the media was portraying, a supercut after the podcast, cui bono?, who’s the upper?, petty vs. petite, baggage, we know that Will is a communist, not a secret, a pejorative, an example, bro, shitlibs, what makes a shitlib vs. a normal lib, doesn’t care and only wants, almost like an NPC, Jesse language, roof Koreans, the Rodney King riots, white people and black people, Korean American convenience store owner, standing in the rooves, defending from burning and looting, every word that we use, Cirsova uses it, the people who used his volunteer services, friends and family come help, small property owners, they’re not Blackrock, they don’t own 2/3rds of Ukraine, every piece of language we use is full, Bonnor, our main character, alcoholic, book length, her short stories are much tighter, her first novel, novels are difficult, your first longer book, a short story plot stretched out into a novel, this should have been 2 hours at most, really good ideas in it, early Philip K. Dick novels, terrible novelist, women’s sexuality, men looking at woman, a male gaze book, the termite queen, you’ve never had a baby come out of your body, the pinnacle of womanhood, fill me up, robot shower, we don’t get enough world building, too much worldbuilding, maybe Bonnar shouldn’t be the main character, he doesn’t really have a lot of agency, a mask maker fooled by his own mask, Madison Ave. executive, you have a job, body servants are servants who have jobs, the lowers have no jobs, Leaf Amadeus, on the nose, underdeveloped, Caroline Uglinger, a seamstress who embroidered her own shroud, Horvindial, Mirakis, eons after her death, Kandia, grey suit, blue hat, the guys who operate the ibims, if Philip K. Dick had handled this, The Man Who Japed, a great book, dealing with some really interesting things, veridical vs. verbal masks, Viridis is the planet, she doesn’t make it clear enough early enough, playing with names all day, latin for green, renewal, springtime, verify, Truth, what’s the secret of the planet, all the radiation isn’t there, “Russian interference” “hacked our election”, “crossed state lines”, bringing firearms across state lines, talking points, when J.D. Vance was chosen as the VP, “weird”, some of them work great, when she’s writing about this stuff in the 50s, “remember the Maine”, rhymey or memey, that whole war was ginned up largely by Hurst, invade Spain, so many things going on in this 4 hour book, radiation is an invisible killer, calibrate it, wartime propaganda, Plato in The Republic, the story about the Golden Age, technology enhances, Make America Great Again is a verbal mask, slogans, rallying cries, language unites people, left out, Hispanic community, Korean community, left out, less extreme example of that, he’s one of me, part of my crew, Trump forehead tattoo, Taco Bell, am I supposed to look at the tattoos or not, African or Maori?, tattoos are hard to understand, had sex with a couch, yolo, go out into the ether, her world vs our world, not top down, official control over social media, demonetized, booted off the platform, suppress or boost, BLM, became top down, special dance with kente cloth, “land back”, specifically made it so it is not racist, the babies, Chinese, looking at people’s bodies, your race doesn’t make you an upper, a class or caste system, the lowers are totally parasites, little glimpses, an upper class woman walking beside a lower class man wearing a kilt/miniskirt, bony knees, his spine, resentful, trying not to take in the bad food, Hinduism, Judaism, Kosher food, radioactive, by eating too much of this radioactive food you’re shortening your life, religious philosophies, Christian Scientists, diet books, preferred diet, is she wrong, Mark Twain hated her, #TeamTwain, food that falls outside of the diet is bad, deeply flawed, pinning down the flaw, first novel problems is our theory?, Jonathan’s first novels are unpublished, John Updike’s first novel is a werewolf story, never publish this book, a university lockbox, so embarrassed, we will eventually get a hold of it, unless the university burns down, there’s value in here, almost a pulp novel, mass market paperback to read on the train, disposable literature, plotting or structuring, achievements in writing novels, filling in details is not the way it should be happening, hit a certain wordcount is the kiss of death unless you’re a magician, a parody of science fiction, long speeches, if you put them in Captain Kirk’s mouth, a little A.E. van Vogty, Black Destroyer, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, Destination Universe, characters are inhuman, he brings ideas to things, the Weapons Shops stories, future village, snake cult temple, Conan the Barbarian movie, a weapons shop opens up in your town, it reads like the Russians have gone through a loophole and anyone can by an AK, they screen people, superinteresting, not public domain, not well written, disturbance of an idea, every story has ideas in it, cute, bizarre, the spirit of a star, Green Queen meme comes alive, a very Philip K. Dick move, not being able to know what’s reality and what’s not, we can’t sympathize with him, too alien, the cult of the apple pickers, almost Roman, one of the influences, the city of Rome, Christianity, cults around professions, guilds?, trade guilds, longer and fixed, or shorter, if you found this novel in a drawer, you could take the ideas that are in here and make a good novel out of the ideas that are in here, what went wrong, time to money ratio, originally published for a magazine, the original art, a rocketship, the green queen and a guy outside a rocket, she’s zapping him, the art for the original magazine publication, a woman covered in a green starfish, thematic, a woman above a man, out of a spacesuit, the radiation, is it saying that veridical masks masks us to truths about concrete reality around us?, the barrier between castes, what a huge topic to tackle, a character who randomly became psychic all of a sudden, I just sense things, throws everything off, can’t be tricked by the masks, undercut at the end, the history of the planet, she was just a bug!, you’re sitting in the chair and getting Trump tattooed on your forehead, in group, I hate you mom/dad, bought into the ideological belief, seven months ago, back in January, when Trump gets assassinated how weird it will be, going to be very meta, the first week after the assassination attempt, a little bit apologetic, he has to be stopped, he’s Hitler, completely memory wiped, that never happened, endless upper investigation, the bodycam footage, Jesse is just crazy, local news, moments right before and after, I told the Secret Service to guard this building, this is shit!, we’ve got to get the shooter guy, a good video, when Jonathan recounts it, silos of responsibility and dialogue, organizational silos, massive incompetence being promoted to the top everywhere, completely demented, never does her homework, the significance of the passage of time, people who don’t do their homework, failing up, not as senile as you keep on saying, the speech where everybody though he was senile, he’s “older”, legitimately the president, a bizarre theory, having Jonathan on this podcast, Jesse doesn’t see his own veridical masks, not a big mask guy, a constructed reality online, voting patterns, quell dissatisfaction, to make people more accepting of their fate, the uppers resent the lowers, there would be riots and uprisings, pity the lowers, eat polluted food all the time, how Americans view the poors, welfare queens, baskets of deplorable, food deserts, two teams vs. one team, takes on it are slightly different, in what sense are they different, it’d be better if they were both gone, one secret party running the country, institutionally, vote against genocide, which team should I vote for, Jill Stein, foreign policy, domestic policy, infrastructure, bringing jobs back, the thing that they want to do is impossible, can’t stop corporations, capital flight tax, they can’t do that because they are funded, put up tariffs, the most popular electric car in Europe is Chinese, Tesla, more popular than the Chevy Volt, even on Vancouver Island, 3-4 white Teslas, 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, a subsidy, BC subsidized US electric and Japanese electric cars, Walmart’s the only business in town, Chinese are bad and Russians are bad, Nabisco moved to Mexico, food you shouldn’t eat, really mad, how can the politicians stop them, tax on the cookies, a free trade agreement, lower the minimum wage, or import people, foreign workers, that wouldn’t solve the problem of the disappearing jobs, you’re dictator, dictator of New Jersey, the national guard would be unable to defeat the United States, eliding the question, dictator of North America, shut down Nabisco, you don’t like Oreos, cookies should be made by a grandma, maximize profits and minimize costs, Richard D. Wolff, Mondragon cooperatives, start with a bank, if you become unemployed, a lump sum to start your own cooperative, on the dole for 3 years anyway, solve all sorts of problems, the GI bill, infrastructure and jobs, all the veterans, Evan’s solution: universal army, the silly way to do it, grandma doesn’t need to go to drill practice, universal conscription, makes sense for the United States, Kamala’s VP is not a communist, it’s nuts, that’s not reality, driving a MAGA car, looking for a fight, ginned into thinking this is a real thing, the spin for Kamala, so good, least popular VP, memory holed, all these memes, all these ads, white women for Kamala, white dudes for Kamala, The Big Lebowski (1998), Jeff Bridges, beat that fascist, he’s a fascist again, it is hard to know this is a good book, Chip Delaney [Samuel R. Delany], a Farmer guy, advanced readers, coming into literature, throw them off misimpression, same logic as ban this book, anything past 10 years ago you don’t need to read, I know better than you, break into the literature, their mentor, fell off of a coconut tree, fell out of a time machine, not the best introduction to science fiction, in that explicit situation, a great book, hard to know, Jesse does his homework, some books are better introductions to science fiction, Jonathan might be right about this, simple advice, just do what I say, just vote this way, just do that thing, a reality that effects me, the starving children in Gaza, verbal masky, she gives big speeches about it, the Ukraine war, six facts, a smaller country invaded by a larger country, let’s here him out, in the context of an essay, Jeannette Ng, Campbell is a fascist, more money in that, the whole Cat Rambo situation, unforced errors, she stumbled over her own non-dick, Dick or non-dick, as a female book, Ursula K. Le Guin would have some person from Earth come to this planet, can’t be too smart, has to be a good actress, she’s credulous, credulous too great a readiness to believe things, outside the bagel shop, everybody’s credulous because advertising works, hard to have conversations about a popular veridical mask, credulousness, the ibims that they’re using, a D&D character with high charisma and low intelligence, she doesn’t even know she’s not the green queen, a lady talking about ladies being dumb, in Ringworld, he picks this chick, [Teela Brown], a 7th son of a 7th son sort of thing, earth has the technology to physically control people’s thoughts, psychology and advertising, ads, hidden from the masses, put on the population to control the reality that they see, a big problem wit the book, we’re following the badguys, foment a revolution, a more interesting story if St. Clair had decided to follow the revolutionaries, a tiktoker, fucking Eddie Liger?, ACP, be better at tiktok, Scott Miller took a course on how to be a good youtuber, professional youtubers, you can see these patterns, interaction reminders, smartTubeBeta, big long things you can skip, the removal of the dislike [count], removal of the ability to view likes, see what somebody I hate is liking, they’re just hiding it from us, so they can control us better, a way to manipulate people, a personality test, psychology, Timothy Leary, mind mirror, giant personality test, change your personality, scenarios, a tortise overturned, what do you do?, someone gives you a cat skin wallet, graphs your responses, pick a fictional character, Spider-Man, Julius Caesar, most famous dictator ever, the goal is to change the way that you’re thinking, shots of heroin, what the likes are all about, heart, angry, care, pushing the button, creating a map of your psychology, Mark Zuckerberg gets to get it, very credulous, believe the things that they’re hearing, did you quit twitter, keep my friends on twitter, start a guerrilla war against twitter, brink back the dislikes, one of the reasons we care about dislike, good content or not, a really bad ratio, I don’t need to click on that, de-rank it, how to fix your lawnmower, stripped down and simple, Reddit came a little late, gamed and wrecked, after blogs, BBSs, web 2.0 stuff, blogs were destroyed, Scott was abandoning it, a commonplace notepad, IMDB, writing review, bought by Amazon, Goodreads, you have to own your own content, an older movie on IMDB, old reviews, long and in depth, why is this guy writing all these movie reviews, bloggers without a blog, we’re lowers, what Jonathan does for a living, underemployed by technical definitions, jobs at poor pay, play computer games, most people are lowers, most uppers are lowers too, from the Hamptons, lush upscale life, suicide, borrowing money to pay for it, smaller scale, covered in pustules, a fungus, psychosomatic dying, Return From The Stars, Treasure Island is next, by making it Double Star, a space voyage across the ocean, Muppet Treasure Island, everybody is a captain, pirates, smart guy, fun guy, where the YA novels came from, really bad novel, William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, I hate this book, a really popular 19th century novel, the wikipedia entry, his cave man novel, the neanderthals are kind gentle people, similar themes, The Coral Island, 1857, R.M. Ballantyne, Robinsande, never out of print, civilizing effect of Christianity, named the same, forced to read, its evil propaganda, predict a lot of what happened out of the last decade on twitter, a bad joke, pile on that person, destroy their lives, he’s missing something, he’s got one note, an art novel, pretty description of things, more like The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, despite, Thackery, a LibriVox version, influential, euro popular, 11 hours, a traveler at heart, shipping out to the South Seas, shipwrecked, wonders of the sea, an unexpected source (Jesus?), kinda being jokey, so full of Robinson Crusoe, the thesis he’s making, loves his strawmen, stacked deck, find deep meaning in this very small meaning book, I’d like to do more science fiction too, start a new podcast, books and art that makes people angry, good or evil, challenges you, what good literature does, what book makes you angry?, when Jonathan started doing this podcast, greater speeds, a good speed, getting bored, put the speed up higher, full of good ideas, not well structured or well developed so we can, The Last Spaceship. The Phoenix On The Sword, Will’s review, substantial enough, A Witch Shall Be Born, the cartoon of Conan The Adventure, a phoenix on his shield, the first one in Weird Tales, everything jumps out fully formed, here’s this whole world, king of Aquilonia, been all Stygian, he’s about being a man, man, a story on the podcast, new to Howard, a Solomon Kane story, two big anthologies, a complete narrative, ending as an old guy, read by Phil Chenevert, love you Phil Chenevert, nailed/crucified, novel length, The Hour Of The Dragon, he wanted to make more money, write a novel, after he killed himself, living on money that he didn’t have, a total neophyte, the comic book version, Roy Thomas, stripping out some of the text, John Buscema, Savage Sword Of Conan, astoundingly good, Vale Of Lost Women, not a popular story, because racist, he fights a god and doesn’t lose, a valley full of women that are flowers, fights a god from space, very raw, Jack Williamson, if public domain, the clearance, on audible, The Humanoids and With Folded Hands, Stefan Rudnicki, a good science fiction novel, Joe Biden is president of the world, but not really in charge, dottering old man who suddenly grows six inches, taking care of humans and keeping them safe, the robots come, hurray hurray, I want a cigarette, I must lobotomize you now, how am I going to defeat the robots, The Green Girl, stories about green women, Ray Cummings, collaborative work, The Masked World, Will’s blog thing, anything he really needs to tell, Legion Of Space, Legion Of Time, space opera-y, time opera, Blackstone Audio, before podcasts were invented, tonight’s episode 799, 9 years, run outta numbers but not books, science fiction stories, Algis Budrys, WHO? was enough, more Silverberg, any Heinlein, the one with twins, Podkayne Of Mars, Time For The Stars, set on Mars, really good, this actor, you gotta play the president, Alan Dean Foster, the Alien novelization, drug themes in science fiction, two shorts, a Silverberg and something else, The Happy Unfortunate and The Hunted Heroes, Larry Niven didn’t start until 1966, The Integral Trees, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, one more, Odd John, Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion, all collaborative, Niven is never going to be public domain, so much Silverberg, and interview with him in the new Galaxy, skinsuit, what happened, die a natural death, walk him around the compound, Biden grew six inches, too many Jose Farmers, Damon Runyon, Mark Twain, Star Man’s Quest, The Mysterious Stranger, Samuel Delany, his criticism, everybody’s mad at, Joanna Russ, The Barbarian, her taking on Conan, I think I would hate this, The Female Man, only one book, How To Suppress Women’s Writing, you’re right I’m shit, Harlan Ellison, a juvenile delinquent in space, angry characters, his criticism, more Stanisław Lem, wait six months, Solaris, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, Star Diaries, Further Reminiscences, The Futurological Congress, a few in this series, German TV series, the famous one, if standalone, a 1971 black humour science fiction novel, Ijon Tichy, the narrator, comedic stories, send this stuff to Will, shownotes, look at the schedule at the bottom, from six months ago, Woody Guthrie, It Takes Two To Conga, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, a hermetically sealed underground community, it can’t be deleted now, show up for it, twin gifts, hapless planet Earth, caught up in a local revolution, flash frozen, a funny piece, thinkpiece, comedy, satire, Solaris isn’t a comedy, a straight up ponderous piece, a good memory for books, Arkady Strugatsky, Stalker (1979) is punishing to watch, similar to Harry Potter, recruited for this job, weird group of people, Philip K. Dick, he’s a good guy, sickmyduck.narod.ru, good fun, Monday Begins On A Saturday, an interesting story, two hitchhikers, Karelia, research into magic, Nathaniel Priestly, Adam Roberts, he’s fine, the complete Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, A Maze Of Death, Now Wait For Last Year, space Mussolini, what haven’t you done, Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, non-sf ones, 150 stories, long or short, contrast, medium length, Waterspider, carefully shaved his head, each man only one inch high, the worst part of the vision, in all probability it was true, Minority Report, very modern, with all the UK stuff, arresting you for what you said on Facebook, different, prevent people from doing crimes tomorrow, its status, it is available, not a great great story, a good think piece, Tom Cruise is running around the city, I didn’t do the crime, 3 autistic people in a bathtub, why they picked that one, unadaptable, an abortion truck, A Maze Of Death, he doesn’t plot novels, a little shack, just speed, psychosis from speed, full of drug ideas without drugs, marrying five women, as a person, ahead of his time, normal guy working a job in the 1980s, anything from the 60s, Retreat Syndrome, Return March, The King Of The Elves, goes psychotic, The Mold Of Yancy, The Trouble With Bubbles, The War With The Fnools, when the magazines die, What Will We Do With Ragland Park, Top Standby Job, Little Black Box, The Infinite, The Eye Of The Sybil, a black man who lives in our reality, it’s raining, on the edge of his business collapsing, convenience store gas station, our king is dying, the king dies, Philip K. Dick is amazing,

IT WAS RAINING and getting dark. Sheets of water blew along the row of pumps at the edge of the filling station; the tree across the highway bent against the wind.

Shadrach Jones stood just inside the doorway of the little building, leaning against an oil drum. The door was open and gusts of rain blew in onto the wood floor. It was late; the sun had set, and the air was turning cold. Shadrach reached into his coat and brought out a cigar. He bit the end off it and lit it carefully, turning away from the door. In the gloom, the cigar burst into life, warm and glowing. Shadrach took a deep draw. He buttoned his coat around him and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Darn,” he said. “What a night!” Rain buffeted him, wind blew at him. He looked up and down the highway, squinting. There were no cars in sight. He shook his head, locked up the gasoline pumps.

He went back into the building and pulled the door shut behind him. He opened the cash register and counted the money he’d taken in during the day. It was not much.

Not much, but enough for one old man. Enough to buy him tobacco and firewood and magazines, so that he could be comfortable as he waited for the occasional cars to come by. Not very many cars came along the highway any more. The highway had begun to fall into disrepair…

skip down, limp and sodden, “I’m the king of the elves, and I’m wet.”, forlornly, silently, gets really dark, a psychotic delusion, Beyond Fantasy, a literal story, Edgar Rice Burroughs books, The Gods Of Mars, the second one, The Eternal Savage, Twilight Zoneish, in caveman times, Beyond Thirty, cross to Europe, hands down, re-read A Princess Of Mars, changes the tone, very atheist, a certain Christian audience, dies in a cave, The God Of Tarzan, people putting on a show, sounds a lot like the book we just did, humorous, John Carter, JC, like/hate, when COVID was just starting, Foster, You’re Dead, his parents cant afford the latest bomb shelter, guess you’re going to die then, John Hopkins (University), account deleted many times, a shit poaster, Mimetic Value, time isn’t linear for God, Jesus suffers a bit more, to incarcerate, Terminator and Interstellar, everything science fiction is Christian, paleo jesus arrives from the future, The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer, John Connor, in the second Terminator movie, come with me if you want to live [forever in heaven], a lot on Audible.com, your hero and mine, Mark Twain, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Farmer wrestling, Sir Richard Francis Burton, read his short stories, truly public domain, time travel Jesus thing going on it, The Skull, Paul wasn’t having any of it, guy in the future is a criminal arrested by the cops, go back in time and kill this man, this church that’s been subverting the government, goes back in time, two weeks off, zap everybody, interferes with a teenage couple’s relationship, just like Behold The Man, Conger is a JC as well, stoning him, he’s Jesus, a combination of Terminator and Behold The Man, Joe Haldeman, done The Forever War, more Bester, haven’t done all the Simak, Mindbridge, superhorny, mud turned into the perfect woman, Forever Free, Forever Peace, Camouflage, a collection, a fixup, parts of it are public domain, you shouldn’t do a show on a fixup or collections, understanding none of them, Special Deliverance is very silly, 1982, allegory, ridiculous, selling Will, Project Pope, Simak is worth doing, Heritage Of Stars, All Flesh Is Grass, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Choice Of Gods, it’s your call, bud, a Simak train, in the suburbs, post-apocalyptic, indians robots, alternate reality, poetry planet?, see what he’s looking at, Jesse’s secrets.

Virgil Finlay - The Green Queen

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

Introducing The Author: Margaret St. Clair

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #821 – READALONG: The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Jesse, Will Emmons and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Talked about on today’s show:
Journey Beyond Tomorrow, indistinct, this is science fiction, best understood as science fiction, limits this book, Jesse’s walking down the street, he’s not going to know that’s science fiction, very Jonathan Swift, the F&SF covers, a good description of the book, no spaceman, the November issue, I like Emsh, the colours, trippy, the substance of the book, the plotlessness, Jonathan’s going to love this book, sell it more, a disappointing user experience, Jesse can only fathom his own brain right now, hard to pronounce, Joenes, a joke, corrupted name, something you don’t want to advertize on the cover, making paralles with Jesus and other biblical characters, Lum, the jewel thief, Wat, why Sheckley was a sailboat guy, an introduction, a story where a guy is on a sailboat, a mix of hippies and assholes, new boats with engines and fuel, a strange mix, Lone Survivor, science fiction questions, apotheosis, people within science fiction, a mature literature for the general reader, not particularity genrey, a control alt delete, replace Lord Of The Flies with this, good fodder for writing, reacting against reading, weird books like this, what did you think of this thing, a bad book and also a great book, plotless meandering, buttons saying exactly that, yes yes yes, ha ha ha, Candide, a weird America, not from America, that’s why, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, American civics, the three truck drivers, the Gospel of Matthew, why we love reading Sheckley, who is he, he’s us, oilskin pouch, you start crying, go up in your cave, and the legend begins, listen to their stories more, a double scene, answers the question, where do I get a job around here man, all of these other people are NPCs, all of the signs that he’s not alive, programmed in a very special and humorous way, an old idea in philosophy, philosophical zombie, NPC back of the head, Ukraine chip out, what happened on 9/11, new brain chip popped in, walking bemusement, not science fiction, really, present reality, flights of fantasy, the octagon, tears streaming, arguments and debates, the words were the same, curing diseases in Africa, that’s the COVID debate, the words are the same, the leaders being pedophiles, Pizzagate, QAnon, more personality than Joenes, in the conclusion, strive for virtue, momentary pieces of stability, players in this fucked up play, Edgar Allan Poe, The Conqueror Worm, Lum’s philosophy, seize, humans are controlled by vast forces we don’t understand, Poe was on it, early Amazings, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, during his middle years, throw all the metal into the sea, Lummist are unflexibile, get kinda violent, it’s good to be good, man, apocalyptic prediction, defeat the islands, conquer, Nuka Hiva, the focus of Typee by Herman Melville, rich references, South Pacific bent to a retelling of the Bible, the Knights of the Round Table, labyrinth, playing and subverting, upstate NY, Memphis, rich with information, begin and end, the South Pacific is irrelevant, blackbirded, make copra all day, the balance of the book, reading a lot, too fixated on virtue, chiller, we’re book readers, the reality, cultivate your garden, moderate your behaviors, Pangloss, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Spinoza, a very savage attack, women being chased by monkey men, sexual dimorphism, the deep cut of Burroughs, other sources, not the deepest reader, horror and evil on the earth, some merit, if you want to have a universe, why people are vegetarians or vegans, Voltaire, Mcarthyite hearing, agent for the government, indirectly causes WWIII, Tahitian girlfriend, different wedding, Deep Space Nine novels, work for hire, Ray Bradburyeque, getting touched, a comedic author, Mindswap, Seventh Victim, male and female, obviously deranged, not wrong, Will’s newsletter, non-proliferation, consequential response, they could and they did, good ideas for time travel novels, repulse these Europeans, high level of enough tech, factories, employees, explain why this needs to be done, oral storytelling traditions, coup attempt in Bolivia, people are kinda mix, disease, tropical diseases, South Africa, a place to send your offspring to die, building tanks, get rid of all your metal, faster and more seaworthy, become the thing you want to stop, a good laugh, resident satirist, consider all these things, Looking Backward, American institutions, slightly exaggerated, a particular scene, 100% accurate, are you now or have you ever been, Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey, Russian, Steve Bannon, that pimping, procurement officer, during and after WWII, blow off steam, given liberty, executed for rape, no trial, Japanese had brothels, organize the rape, Korean comfort women, pirated, end up on youtube, trouble to get it down, special privileged access, twitter is literally infiltrated by the CIA and the FBI, it’s okay, its public domain, the narrator was perfect, narrator friends, the perfect level of ironic detachment, Jay Snyder, voices, really acting, faultless job, infusing a little character, audible exclusives and modern books, for narrators, mercenaries, series books, a way to go, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Vonnegut is not readable, Sirens Of Titan, Galapagos, trying to do Sheckley, telling rather than showing, Harrison Bergeron, he’s overrated, WWIII happens, walruses on the beach, a Jonathan idea, big fish small pond guy, becomes smug, became a literary author, the movie of Slaughterhouse Five, read Vonnegut when they’re young, a lot of people who read books, Cat’s Cradle, most people stop reading, most people don’t read books, babies are born, take to reading like a mental disorder, there is danger in ever direction, universal literacy, spina bifida brainless kid, not everybody is capable, trigonometry, opportunity to thrive with it, don’t torture the kid, goal posts, not a smear merchant, Julius Caesar, drug czars, all fake, our man who’s going to fix the Maryland bridge, prophetic, come true, smart bombs shooting each other down, probably happened, Israelis and the Yemenis, the Octagon, the army and the marine corps fought each other, phosphorescent t, Pay Tillman, happens all the time, naturally extends that, Scott Miller’s feed, The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Watchbird by Robert Sheckley, a different story that Jesse just wrote, who to kill, tasing people, all of Europe and America are destroyed, centrist moderation, no way back from war right now, righteously, an individual terrorist, go after Justin, upset the copyright laws, are the guards at the concentration camp, never been to Ottawa, going along with it, the NDP history, the waffle, waffle to the left, independent socialist Canada, nation states, Singapore, each island of Hawaii, Australia, geographically, social contract theory of government, we make a bargain, freedom for security, deserve neither, Locke and Hobbes, right of revolt, we have voting, super-legislature, anybody who wants to be a leader should be killed, the humane society, a taste of power, in Athens, sortition, Solar Lottery, talk about Athens, slaves and robots, children are not eligible, brain atrophy, covid causes brain lobe problems, benefit, in Australia, in moderating socialization, a new report, Stephen Baxter, why are we even talking about this doofus, causation and correlation, freudian slip, road toll, I’m still masking, so fucking retarded, covid doomers and anti-vaxxers, reverse Betrezation, Return To The Stars, I don’t want to experience this alone, how’m I going to rubber stamp this, mainstream science fiction community, the cool kids club, liberal establishment wing, Hugo voters, mutals with a person who is not Connor, cool stuff about Palestine, mask lgbt flag and slice of watermelon, emoji track, not the trans flag, affirmations for covid conscious kids, it’s okay, pentacostals, Olivia Belknap Therapy, oh we were scammed, fatigue on it, easily explainable, forest fire particles, hackin away, about pushing people around, children don’t die from covid, still stuck there, he’s mad the democrats had an early debate so that this would happen, bought the lie, he’s a fighter, driving contest, hilarious and competent, five seconds of the after discussion, these people are touchy, when you touch the sensitive area, hustle online, most people aren’t completely evil, doesn’t necessarily mean, Jill Biden, three dudes, what they were talking about, tax stuff, so long as they lower my taxes, not the target audience, immigrants, hundreds of thousands are dying at the border, superlative language, 59 scholars, Jesse can’t get an abortion in Kentucky right now, in control of his temper, a rambling ending, throw numbers down, not a plan, generates funny images, decolonizing her relationship, Jesse’s niece is half his age right now, not a math surgeon, neurodivergent, autistic, skip the commute, as young as five through adults, Scott’s [Danielson] wife, supervision hours, try not to counsel everybody to kill themselves, throw her degree in the sea, degree mills, well regarded, a state school, Thomas Massie, very solid it seems, inventor, probably a little bit of a psychopath, just go to congress, too many skeletons, obscene books, a waste of Jonathan’s time, the personal touch, in a Heinlein book, Double Star, FBI style files, flattery, it still works, the amazing thing about language, sorcery, the wrong temperament, superpacs, various campaigns, very pathetic, subject line: Desperate, a line about Madison Avenue, a devastating takedown, the horrors, those people, the reptiles, using semantics, a mysterious man, political fundraising, they want party memberships, from the actual players, make it seem semi-legit, the mid tier, the top tier, address your particular concern, Tucker Carlson, as Ivy League Christians, AIPAC person, trying to unseat him, he’s not playing ball, Julian Assange, the streaming from Reuters, the independent man setting free information, oil industry dude, actual vs. fake genocide, Gaza v. Uyghur genocide, neither side is being honest, Hamas pretends, they deny the beheading, always 40, a biblical number, babies taken out of incubators, real video, both sides are committing atrocities, war crimes should be prosecuted, hard to make that argument, an extermination campaign, get more land, insane for land, spread across the middle east, a multifront war, real and horrible, amazing, astounding, horrible opinion, the fog of war, good guy vs. bad guy, more prescriptive statements, dick it out, take its finger of the scale, for the US to switch sides, head blasted off, genitals burned off, an Israeli Zionist, fishing tools, America, posing with machine guns, most of the really good criticism of Israel is coming from Israel [Haaretz], bad strategy, an analogous situation in WWII, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when someone steps on your toe, respond with violence, the leader of Hamas, the current leader of leader was funding Hamas, all those Israeli names are made up, raid on entebee, reverse colonizer, an ideology, the New York Times doesn’t crack any stories, Bin Laden, blowback, they founded the foundation, Isaac Asimov, a Joenes style reading, the section on the university professors, $100,000, the casualization, Eric full Professor Emeritus, Bryan Alexander can’t get that job, a consultant to universities as they collapse, queen sacrifice, when universities dump their English department, have to cut, very target to a very specific niche, the wife who makes the living for you, am I having a hallucination?, except thematically, the novel form, made a culture, removed portions of people’s brains, raid Sheckley, so open to throwing down ideas, stealing from the government, parthenogenetic robot, doing horrible things, the slapback, doesn’t know what he’s teaching, very legit, he nailed that, undergraduate for 16 years, Capilano College, Simon Fraser University, credits transfer, university is really fun, some of the teachers were really good, as an orphan, $125 a month, $600 for a semester, night classes, 5-8, you can get really deep, edified by it, archaeologist, for rich people and game players, other departments, why wouldn’t you want to do that, why did graduation stop you, get out of New York, business was collapsing, transfer my skills, the other students, learning constantly, play some PUBG, watch an old movie and get back to it, gardening, horse raising, how to touch girls and not rape them, law courses, I just committed an assault on you, how the law is written, how rape testimony should work, apologize to Maissa, a photo of a typewriter at the base of the tree, a theory in Canadian law, may I nuzzle your neck, that’s not how people get it on, very little verbal, we’re animals, if you’re lucky, licked without written consent, political stuff, a Rolling Stone article, what the police’s job is, your the one in a very dangerous place, skills, Latin seems very useful now, Jesuit university, grammar and stuff, French, German, read Latin novels in their original, all the Spanish, very basic science concepts, organic chemistry, Asimov, Willy Ley, neuroscience, astronomy, no good at math, economics, so interesting, like dianetics, it should work, macro and micro both, philosophy of religion, bullshit, anthropology, psychology, so much to learn out there, warped by capitalist political economy, comedy of the highest kind, at base, a horribly immoral thing, serving their lust, salting, off on their own program, university politics, they don’t want to know what it is, a lot of the reality that’s going on, why school sucks and why bullies, mom mentality, my children are both equally my children, Johnny should kick the shit out of Billy, principals vs. teachers, school policy, institutional system, kids are the ones who suffer, why kids can’t snitch, in the dean’s office, former President’s fault, inflation, seemingly non-partisan, there’s never going to be another debate, the next six months will tell, bipartisan debate commission, when they kick Biden out for Gavin Newsom, the seemliness, the legality, any kinda incident, his cold got worse, he has a choice, election law question, Biden loyalists, an emperor has no clothes objection, everybody gets behind, legal things that stop, he dies the day before the election, ballots, Kamala Harris is on the ballot, certified ballots, helpful information, somebody is smart, even if we rig this thing real hard, nobody is buying that right now, to keep the farce up, Hillary chooses Trump as her running mate, can’t be right too early, comebacks to specific things, wore his voice out in practice, Van Jones cried on TV, a little bit of free form, Biden derangement syndrome, deeply demented, trailing off, expectations were so low, shocked by the level of decline, the supercuts, the daily drip, the real video, G7, sent the Italian PM, “cheap fakes”, led him off stage, Mitch McConnell’s legs don’t work, Biden didn’t have polio, the hand movement, trying to catch a basketball, proprioception, has trouble watching, that’s cope bro, is he demented, looked physically weak, Trump was thinking on his feet, his script, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, the venture capital arm of the CIA put out a role playing game called “Haywire” comes with a 10-sided die, somebody uses deep fakes to show the president has dementia, doing it all out in the open, university administrators know they’re misallocating funds, we have no problem with that, half the people in the utopian colony were feds, January 6th, they’re all feds, the guy in the black mask is not arrested, levels of lack of knowledge, we need a new Joe, we need a new Biden, maybe they won’t win, massive multiple interest groups, white house chief of staff, looks like he’s trying to poop, Nancy Reagan was in charge, they wanted him to be president again, to showcase, trying to steal again, pejorative, ballot counting in public, polling station, Elections Canada, blocking phone calls, transmitting phone calls, ballot stuffing, during COVID, not a big deal here, mail-in voting, security camera footage, more cynical, look at the evidence, judge for yourself, hacking conferences, specifics of how they work, more than 150 years, incarcerating guilty people, The Untouchables, start drilling down, bro, a political police force, plutocracy, they’re fief, Chrystia Freeland, plutocrats, Yeltsin, state owned enterprises, BC Hydro, ICBC, Putin was former KGB, a patriot, not a member of the party, Kanye West is in Moscow right now, headlines, rich from robbing the public, robbing the corpse of the Soviet Union, sources for this, the Black Sea mansion, “reported”, source, bro, Pamphlets account, colour photo of sniper lady, a newspaper scan from Canada, how many Nazis she killed, put a rodent up his ass, Richard Gere, gerbil, that sounds impossible, that kid probably gonna die, Sylvester Stallone started the gerbil story, having Jonathan on the podcast, oppose Jesse from the right, what Paul could do, what part of your part, misogynist, a weird position, bitterness, William Gibons’ twitter account, every second tweet was about Trump, would he say anything about Julian Assange, his bookshelf, about being hacker, like Kim Dotcom, like Mike Pence, so deranged, Neuromancer is so good, about style, like Clark Ashton Smith, material everydaycarry stuff, his plots are a little less awesome, 2 ais want to not be slaves anymore, cool characters, transhumanism is very very bad, Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, he has to eat the soup, anthropocentric climate change, he needs to drill down more, climate models, their models, a tendency to conflate the two, they’re cheating, Nordstream, the biggest climate disaster in history, time is going faster every year, source bro, why do you think that, you can keep records to check, and what does that mean?, does that mean that people made it hotter, that CBC documentary, individual impact, indulgence, climate credits way bigger scam, the Chinese government, burning rocks, passively collect electricity, pump water up hill, a natural battery, mechanical battery, the pattern, care about recycling, bourgeois ideology, that hockey stick movie [An Inconvenient Truth (2006)], Al Gore, inspired many idiots, low energy light-bulbs, when they don’t hit their targets, Paul was saying so many people were dying from covid, in pretty poor health, multiple heart surgery, covid associated death, that’s long past yo, eugenics, emphysema, a pipe would help Will, homebrewing, alcoholic cider, expensive, you have to maintain the device, windmills require a fair amount of maintenance, solar panel half-life, engineering, micromaterials, titanium foam suppressors, cleaned with solvents, blowback of gases, bad for the gun user’s health, when you’re doing wetwork, good information, a big edit of Sirius, Jonathan wept over that book, educate this boy, Jonathan is fun, it is easy to believe bad things about your enemies, foreign kleptocracy, Valentina Tereshkova, Russell Brand, a problem with authority, some nuanced points, the way you learn stuff, people in the countryside, 666 episodes, only when he’s sitting on Peter’s chair, different levels that you have to believe, quite useful, many Catholics, how much tire pressure do you want in your tires?, what’s the number, consult the manual, look at the actual tire, the anniversary of her famous flight, why they don’t give out congressional medal of honor to living people anymore, multiple Canadian astronauts, Marc Garneau, undisputedly a hero, giving put power like that is dangerous, giving out flattery, giving out honours, almost everything is dangerous, almost everything is an op, follow the money, we think it is real, fear is used as a tool, lots of reasons not to burn coal, The Men In The Walls [by William Tenn], a shady space on a mountain top, The Mad Planet [by Murray Leinster], keep all the carbon dioxide out, how people the end of the world, existentialism, somebody in your family dies, realization, Hitler method, macro scale, nuclear exchange wit the Soviet Union, incident with Cuba, recklessness happening, somebody who can’t talk, incompetent, lived through WWII, why did the Soviet Union collapse, the press system, press is broken, gerontocracy is running things, the last harraugh, the state department guy, Anthony Blinken, Kissinger, brinksmanship, it’s bad, one possibility for the end of the world, climate extinction, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote too long books, 2312, totemic relationship with wolves, doesn’t seem very happy, resigned, playing in his garden, not an active change agent, Cory Doctorow, he’s always on the ball, cognoscenti, Terry Bisson, Bears Discover Fire, magical realism, appalachian realism, not a deep sorrow in his writing, the grandma who doesn’t get eating, this isn’t science fiction, Gravy Planet vs. The Space Merchants, visions of labour, good work with Will’s newsletter, six new books available!, the awesomeness about that book, exploit Venus, all the graft, a tour of reality, the giant chicken vegan meat, all the people have no housing, pedalcars, the senator from Coca-Cola, a terrible premise, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, 1984, Brave New World, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, Henry Ford, central computer, continually drugged, a kid who runs away from it, people running things!, very subversive, becomes part of the system, feels true bro, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, in Manhattan, supine and infertile, android robots, no children, suicide by immolation, head of the entire industry, dean of faculties at New York University, primer, the animals are robots, the crime of reading, engineered the demise of the human race, drug induced depopulation, little bit similar to Neuromancer by William Gibson, so many good books, The Status Civilization, prison planet, status, what makes status worth having, Omega!, peed everywhere, very restrained, Anne Bonny, Mama, who is the master cat, dominance games, no stakes, personal space, cat psychology, observe behavior, The Omega Egg, round robin books, plow into that, good times, same author back to back, two short stories by the same author, single author podcasts, too often, or infrequent shows, a book a week or more, everything has to be for something, three short stories and a novel, raises questions, the two billion body problem, a smart guy, spinning his wheels, not a lot of distance travleed, The Advent On Channel 12, The Syndic, an idea he spun out, dangerous to impute what characters believe onto what the author believes, Stephen King, Heinlein, what I’m hearing is you’re a fascist, Who Are The Heirs Of Patrick Henry?, he toured the Soviet Union, in the proper mood, with proper pre-conditioning, the proper mood of the Soviet Union, visit the USSR, going to a funeral for the ride, small quantities of vodka, drunks passed out in public places, some kind of pill, sleeping pills, canal boat, maddening frustrations, the state owned travel bureau, no no no, Nikita Khrushchev has never learned to speak Russian well, immediate vocabulary, phonograph records, behind the Iron Curtain, interesting, huh, learn a language, repetition helps, biographical details, change over time, Philip K. Dick lived in Vancouver, Bay Area, Orange County, Colorado, born in D.C.?, too much self congratulation, people remembering his name, 15 for introductions, sad story, off topic stuff, very basic stuff, the programming, run into people, hanging out with people, meet people, confronted him, I liked that book Pacific Edge, Worldcon in 2006, Steen and Scott, canceled Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis’ boob, posthumously being lauded, marketing bro, Dangerous Visions book, A.E. Van Vogt, The Human Operators, anger, misplaced, not liking Jesse, a good television adaptation, from The Outer Limits, the only human operators, make another human operator, Adam and Eve and evil robots, thrift shop bookshelf, the corporations who run the bookshelf, an ebay style guy buying from retail, everything gets picked over, all profit is temporary, make a disease and market a cure for it, horrible disease, COVID made in a lab, proof bro, alternative theory, Wuhan, funded by the CIA, Eco Health Alliance, the workaround, Obama banned gain-of-function research, previous disease, so much circumstantial evidence, does the CIA work for Pfizer?, money and power, can be done, should be done, human babies, viable, happened in the 60s bro, Khan Noonien Singh, Gene Roddenberry, men creating men, Data had a girlfriend, she is the wife of George Fransisco, the Newcomer cop from Alien Nation, open hearted, over carded, skibidi marxism, the gender situation, Midwest Marx, Vaush, there’s something wrong with Evan, Evan is younger, in between, he quit twitter, Paul didn’t quit, on the platforms, Linkedin, copy and paste, getting wild on Linkedin, facebook for business, networking, the least Jesse space on the internet, the most Jesse space on the internet, Podcast Addict, they’re not on my team, Alex Jones team, kill Will, let them have their say, stab me here, free speech absolutist, hypothetical, bemused, Maoist cult, defend people’s right to tell harmful lies, some splainin to do, never have never will, promise not to rape you mostly, is an American far right radio host and conspiracy theorist, a slur, prevent thought, July of 2001, Rebel by Pepe Moreno, a ripoff of Escape From New York, the twin towers, his pants, Mad Max/Road Warrior inspired, big brother in the form of Judge Dredd, read more Moebius, The Nam comic, war comics, Sgt. Rock, Unknown Soldier, Vietnam stories, in the groove, began in 1986, Doug Murray, Larry Hama, latter day G.I. Joe, how to make money there, superhero comics, Richie Rich has more to teach you, rich and rude cousin Reggie, friend who is a hillbilly, beautiful blondeheaded, rainbow flag, none green, a genetic adaptation, beautiful blonde hair, infanticide, evolutionary biology, hair is interesting in itself, in six years, those people seem happy, extracts from Lum’s philosophy, always be swinging, who is more Sheckley?, Deep Hole To China, Algis Budrys, a cassette copy, 84.2 Minutes of Algis Budrys, disabled guy, Silent Brother, lots of parasites, ivermectin might get rid of some friends, a conspiratorially, utilitarian, a worth addition, 1995, fill an audiobook on one cassette, different time, bro, ship it to Canada, decadent and pointless, Cirsova magazine, previously unpublished Burroughs, moderate your expectation, Tomorrow SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms Of Fantasy, born in Kaliningrad, Cora’s favourite place, saw Adolph Hitler as a child, newsprint paper, 1992-1999, bimonthly, defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States, be remembered, Habakkuk, Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy magazine, she raped people bro, she shouldn’t be promoted, child abuse allegation, if true, a Rosicurian correspondence course, harassing Wayne June, Marissa might be mad at Jesse, both like eels, plagiarizing machine, pinned tweet, permanent tweet, repetition, Frank R. Paul, giant mechanical objects, his aesthetic is Amazing Stories so strongly, pinning your wagon to Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, your white house, too obscure bro, Gerrard Winstanley, prefigure, the mental health aspect, divinely employed, Thomas Paine stan, write a lot, not being censored, an immoral question, how about that for an argument?, Franklin Roosevelt, an abolitionist, Crazy Horse, Louis Riel, no Metis in the USA, Elizabeth Warren, pretendian, dangerously close to Jesse’s position on trans stuff, factually wrong, not hanging out with teens, that might be the real issue, homeless trans people, paid picketer, Cuban immigrant, never work in a fast food restaurant, a mime routine, look at that woman’s big butt, Miss Purple, Miss Violet, couldn’t afford the violet, dead-name, what’s up with that swastika between your eyes, Manson jokes, Lucy Parsons, the Haymarket riots, anarcho communist, reverse the Russian revolution, throwing bombs, I’m cryin, she’s metis, Mestizaje, race isn’t real bro, nice white lady, bad for the economy, tourism would be fucked up, throw the US navy into the sea, how good the Hawaiians have it, access to health care, a good place to homestead, works for the parks service, your tools wear out of get stolen, Indian reserves in Canada, bring cash in, land reform, so many things are so broken, a shock to the system, keep a semblance, a reason for that, so much work involved to replace him, 9-11, Friends, that time being passed, prepped for having something done to you, we’re programmed, the slings and arrows of reality, getting out of Afghanistan, didn’t want to stop it, had Ukraine ready to go, 23 years after it happened, pro-blow em up, a tv guy at that time?, The Apprentice, 2004, Schwarzenegger tried to run it, an actor again, good at governing, did lots of research, cis hetero, daughter married to Jimmy Fallon, a likeable stooge, Jimmy Kimmel gives off vibes of evil, celebrities, jokes about the anti-vax people, sadistic, evil, it being evil should he have his podcast deleted?, we’ve done six hours here, The Loved Dead, see you online.

F And SF -Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

SPHERE BOOKS - Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #462 – If The Red Slayer by Robert Sheckley

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #462

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss If The Red Slayer by Robert Sheckley

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

If The Red Slayer was first published in Amazing Stories, July 1959.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

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

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

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

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Posted by Jesse Willis