The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft – read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (33 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
only credited to Eddy in Weird Tales, a letter, controversial, banned, Washington, D.C., Everil Worrell, a reading club called The Outsiders, censorship issue, one state, a different version, the Spicy magazines, if it had a star on the cover, naked ladies inside, a horror show, a really fun story, this is a comedy piece, a very dark parody of Edgar Allan Poe, monomania, a Poe like character, a very Lovecraft-like character, Eddy had some hand in it, not a lovecraftian premise, hiding or repressing the truth about reality, stylometery PDF, the curlicues, shook the story, the adjectives fell out, making the serifs more beautiful, a friend of Lovecraft, by Lovecraft?, drips with his style and vocabulary, moreso than the Eddy stories, structure and storyline, rewrote from start to finish in his own house style, the narrator’s school days, teased, sickly, autobiographical notes, The Unnameable, flushing the Poe out of his typewriter, looser feelings, The Picture In The House, blackly comic, massively over the top, Poe’s lyrical shrieking, ghoulishly, qually interested in male and female corpses, he’s necrosexual, dead is his gender, the transrainbow flag, leaves a lot to the imagination, it doesn’t tell you he is having sex with them, he’s hugging them, a vampiric addiction, alive and not listless when around dead people, the silly and fun part, unbased in anything, locked in a coffin for six months, grandfather’s funeral, he comes alive, no goth origin scene, so silly, writing the story on the back of a grave [stone], till he himself becomes one of them, I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, targeted within, they’re hunting me for my murders, The Haunter Of The Dark, writing to the point of death, pungent phrases, the brand of hell, I can write no more…, fantastic, recording this last year, a gift for a narrator, the literary equivalent of heavy metal, pick a random sentence, a lot of ss, crafting it, narrated by someone else, a sillier story in a different way, Pickman’s Model, the language is dialed down, turned up to 11 right from the start, operatic rather than realistic, pointing to the language, some of them are okay, pistol in his pocket, good weird tales, we get the word, tentacles, my thirst for the noxious, delicious, treading on dangerous ground, demoniac desire gripped me, Lovecraft pastiche, asexual, where this story diverts from Lovecraft, his stories are never about sexual desire, The Thing On The Doorstep, having sex with an ancient Lich, Suitable Flesh (2023), Dennis Paoli, Bobby Derie, a sense of humour, dry, dark ghoulish black humour, in The Shunned House, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Lurking Fear, rape, blooming forest, mushrooms with penis shapes, on board with this, sexual fetish, ancestry, drawn to an ancestor, 17th century gentleman, feeling displaced, The Outsider is not about sex, seen holding a corpse, take a vacation, you’ve been working too hard, fallen asleep on the slab, the guy who runs the place has encountered this before, a new twist on a Poe thing, The Premature Burial, molested then buried, further my acquisition of these corpses, he murders you then he caresses you, Re-Animator, sentence by sentence, wasn’t Eddy a neighbourhood kid, six years younger than Lovecraft, same neighbourhood, younger people, that grandpa thing, why The Outsider appeals, I’m not like other kids!, prose poetry maximized, I can give this a gloss and polished, even if entirely Eddy, Clifford Martin Eddy, born in Providence, Swann Point Cemetery, weird legal thing with his heirs, out of the public domain and into copyright, 1918, 1923, Muriel Eddy, women’s suffrage, my son is going to be a writer, The Ghost Eater, a 1924 werewolf story, sandwiches and a revolver, cosplay before Dungeons & Dragons, mary sue style adventures, as mature, Deaf, Dumb And Blind, also a revision, Ashes, With Weapons Of Stone, Theodore Sturgeon, one million percent memorable, in a different league to the other Eddy stories, so gross, pretty good for a story over 100 years old, another necrophiliac story, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, a dead Spanish lady, from the same period, molesting the corpse, she comes alive, overcome by the lust for the body, boss comes in, you’ve had a shock haven’t you, Pity me, reader, pity me, finished the job, I know I screamed, something fleshy, the boss, convalescing from a nervous breakdown, fear laden screams, awful awful, refused to believe me, strenuous work, not on the table of contents, age 15, so delightful and interesting, the imagination and enthusiasm, the gay lady who went to church, the worms crawled out, the worms crawled in, The Eyrie, necrophiliac stories, the entire subject, vampire stories, necrophiliac adjacent, long running dead wife obsession, out and proud, takes a lot of heat, a movie, a female mortician, Kissed (1996), fairly tastefully done, Molly Parker, a corpse has a major role, kind of an art movie, Lynne Stopkewich, Annabel Lee, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, incest adjacent, a maiden there lived, by the side of my bride, penetration, old man having sex with a dead child girl, pretty fucked up, an extraordinary story, builds back to the opening, no ghost element, quite the opposite, looking forward to being with them, more weird menace, using science, I want to have sex with the dead, it’s love, lust too, he loves them, so funny, I really like girls but they’re embarrassing, guys girls whatever, bizarre and silly, this is hilarious, pick some thing to be obsessed with, my bride’s teeth, serial killer confession, Maniac (1980), Maniac (2012), The Evil Dead (1981), Bad Taste (1987), cartoonish, gross or distasteful, so funny, look at me in this festering graveyard, no women, eat people, here to harvest humans, intergalactic taste sensation, Peter Jackson, The Lord Of The Rings wrecked him, The Stuff (1985), Larry Cohen, poorly put together and rushed here and there, satire of consumer culture, the menace from within, God Told Me To (1976), aliens pretending to be god, It’s Alive (1974), monster baby, Maniac Cop series, Bill Lustig, film festival in New Orleans, enormously fat, his legs, an eating vacation, a culinary place, dishes are huge, cajun cuisine, he would order three, a big spoon, three courses in one meal, an amazing eater, Bruce Campbell was cast to be the mirror of Robert Z’dar, his jaw grows too many teeth, played bad guys, the first one is good, people who survive the first one die, a new hero, he dies, playing with its rule, is he a zombie?, he’s dead, they didn’t think about it, it doesn’t make any sense, but the threat is real, the action is good, very legit, pulp fiction, the video store, get movies, carry a guide book, old movies on for cheap rental or purchase, you get a cover, about 90 minutes, a short story, not a novel, the same actors, the same images, a sex thriller, a continuation of the pulp genre in the video series, a Saw parody called Slaw, the devolved end of pulp, Strange Tales, mockbusters, Asylum’s whole business model, they made a hobbit movie?, Sharknado type monster movies, their movies are no fun, a tribute series to our guy Corman, his productions, puts value for money on screen, crappy concept of the week, satellites are in!, Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), Jaws (1975) spawns Piranha (1978), Transmorphers vs. Transformers, tricking audiences, VHS era, Smokey And This That And The Other, Emmanuelle series of movies, good movie vs. interesting movie, Frankenstein and his gimp suit, a comedic per-version of The Running Man (1987), sports are fascist, degeneration and television is controlling people, get points by killing pedestrians, the least good stuff in it, the kayfabe of the race, loving it, too loose, part of the fun of a b movie, intellectually the heft that it has is all in the details, an intellectual film, [Whitman, Price, and Haddad], Battle Royale, could the Loved dead be filmed?, use narration, an exploitation film, nudity, weird sex, bizarre stuff going on, a human love interest, a comedy no matter what, Stuart Gordon, Dagon (2001), Spain, feels broken, we have to film it there, Bleeders (1997) aka Hemoglobin, Rutger Hauer, changes, Nova Scotia, a Lovecraft story in California, jarring, valley girls vs. Cthulhu, ancestral home, what’s this drunk talking about, he’s got a Spanish accent, distracts, a limitation, the villain, The Temple, written by Dan O’Bannon, responsible for a good chunk of 80s and 90s science fiction, Alien (1979), Dead & Buried (1981), lent his name, as much weight as a writer’s name could carry, Lifeforce (1985), Total Recall (1990), Screamers, Terminator world, had a hand in, consistent, Blue Thunder (1983), it works, Peter Weller, infiltrators, claws, robotic drones, killing all humans, Jon’s World and Second Variety, one word titles, Twister (1996), a Michael Crichton project, a junker, a Burt Reynolds tv movie, Coma (1978), Robin Cook, Westworld (1973) was a novel he didn’t write, the all star cast, STEPHEN KING, star power, social media, from a communist point of view, redistribute, land reform, charisma or appeal, the same stars, the Ken doll, Ryan Gosling, Zendaya, Kyle Gallner, Red Letter Media Kyle Gallner specials, Dinner In America (2020), set in the 80s, where America is at, we know where we are, probably autistic, a quasi retarded girl romance, a ski mask, a lovely cute little romance with a lot of style, I remember loving movies, Netflix, get Marvel action star to make an action movie, a movie with heart, The Menu (2022), The Whale (2022), renting a movie online, too restrictive, sail the high seas, bro, 70s Spanish horror, mainly older stuff, the streaming services are quite bad, Tubi, Prime, Plex, links where you can find it, 1940, 1960, 4 movies from the 1980s, television shows, there used to be a countable number of television shows, there’s now an infinite number of television shows, how did that happen?, go down rabbit holes, the boutique DVD labels, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, rare and bizarre, pan and scan, so much better when properly restored, it has to be 88 minutes, silent movies, a hard sell, no silent film streaming service, a 70s action film, The French Connection (1971), let’s watch that, not what we’re being presented with, 80s blockbusters, Gremlins (1984), Karate Kid, long takes, a kid friendly version of weird menace, an end of the world movie, The Parallax View (1974), very modern sensibility, maybe the government isn’t working in our best interests, an election in the UK, Labour has the biggest majority since 1830, getting rid of the antisemitism of Jeremy Corbyn, always do the wrong thing, more of that is coming, a really terrific story to revisit, if it didn’t have Eddy’s name attached, all the Lovecraft stories in 3 paperback omnibuses, it did not disappoint, not a sentence wasted, beautifully structured, a great story to record, creep and gross people out 100 years later, literally beautiful, what Clark Ashton Smith calls Prose Pastels, it is a he, explicitly a he, does it have to be, mortician jobs, not a conventional job for women, he gets rid of his parent pretty quick, not an unreliable narrator, he’s hiding nothing, how much glee he’s having, silly fluff, the very tight structure, not a misstep, precious and very rare and very funny, well written, well structured, over the top-80s, RoboCop (1987)’s ads, hyper reality of 1980s cynicism, They Live (1988), you like Poe stories, you like Weird Tales, here’s one, you’ll love this one… to death, the subject matter, Kissed (1996) was done tastefully, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens Of Titan as a play by Stuart Gordon, Robot Jox (1989), doesn’t quite gel together, worth a watch, flawed, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998), based on a Ray Bradbury play, magic realism, fluorescent white, spilling tacos, delightful and beautiful, Fortress (1992), Christopher Lambert, what makes Highlander (1986) good, a sequel, Stuck (2007), why trash bitch, I’m in trouble I hit a guy, The Pit And The Pendulum (1992), Castle Freak (1995), The Unnameable (1988), and the sequel, The Unnamable II (1992), play well back to back, a sequel that doesn’t suck, space prison, a lot of fun, Escape From New York in space prison, Lockout (2012), Luc Besson, collar around his head blows up, The Running Man (1987), a funny and fun but not good Rutger Hauer movie, Wedlock (1991) aka Deadlock, he’s The Hitcher (1986) he can’t be a nebbish, Mimi Rogers, forced meet cute, why would they set it up that way, a bad sequel, set in future California, two likeable actors with an interesting script, run for 90 minutes, a checklist, Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff, The Terror (1966), Little Shop Of Horrors (1960), very moody, just that simple, all men on an island, No Escape (1993), Ray Liotta, sent to tropical island Hawaiian prison, rival gangs, does explosions, Benghazi, fights back against the discipline, Lord Of The Flies but an action film, my theory that humans are doomed to do the worst things possible, black and white ones, the Puerto Rican trilogy, Hell In The Pacific (1968), snaps, set in Cuba, a satire, the monster is fake, The Last Woman On Earth (1960), Richard Matheson, Creature From The Haunted Sea (1961), Battle Of Blood Island (1960), Poe adaptations, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), Cormania, somebody famous dies, 500 movies, A Bucket Of Blood (1959), a dim witted busboy, satire of art, great artist, same sort of vibe, a ridiculous premise and run with it, The Wasp Woman (1959), bees make royal jelly, wasp royal jelly, turns you into a wereladywasp, a really good job, fun funereal words, here at this farm, dogs, chickens, cows, throwin hay all day, rooster in the background, since Christmas or New Years, a four hour trip, all rural, not students in need of tutoring, farmlife, see you on the internet, Sunday afternoon, get two edits done, WHO? by Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon, science fiction version of The Man In The Iron Mask.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #820 – READALONG: The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – Jesse, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

Talked about on today’s show:
1977?, 1975, died in 1976, serialized, The Weir Woods, Cirsova Alex is hard to get, Winged Victory by Thomas Burnette Swann, who stood model, graceful sweep, Tennessee poet and writer, problem with the narrator, him recording over himself, Arachne spirit ghost, echo, same narrator, a producer choice, during the singalong, audio italics, stepped away from the microphone and kept recording, inconsistent, two mispronunciations, obscure words, enthusiastic about his production, commendable, straight narrations, transparent, the door creaked open, taking italicized text, is this in his head?, back and forth, makes a comment, some sort of barrier between dialogue, missing context, while hiking, listened at home, listened to in sleep, dreamy, dream interpreted, like them about the same, the plot is not really the focus, the character and being recognized as a sexual being, too fat, repetition, the flabbiness of novels, the book itself is probably very good, didn’t have a plot, characters, stuff they were doing, stuff happens, plodding along, the aunt, very rich her sacrifice of having sex with all the little people, a scholar of a bunch of people, women starts of a particular movie company, a Christina Rosetti scholar, what happens in Goblin Market, pixie men, on the level of metaphor, lost a lot of weight, burned a lot of calories, sexual awakening, lost in the woods, sitting around in baskets, teleported between set pieces, how did they get to the mill?, rushin to get stuff done, everybody is happy, the real forest is the friends we made along the way, the bad lady, woman burned at the stake, off to London, destroy lives there, if it wasn’t so enjoyable, the story needs to do something, go into the forest, sick in bed, new excuse to go back to that forest, by balloon, hadn’t gone back to Bristol, straight dreamworld, weird hybrid, we’re missing the point, cosy relationships, class difference relationships, all about the body, raising children, the water horse, the horses of Llyr, not really well described, the back cover, the dedication, To Helen, is this a Lord Dunsany?, gently o’er, on desperate seas, the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, Poe to his adopted mom, Mrs. Allan, Poe is the original Dreamlands guy, technically bad, a Robin Hood scene, doing this creation, the apologies, the missing guy, a real poet, imagining he didn’t commit suicide, ghost, The Coffin Merchant by Richard Middleton, Arthur Machen, King George III, pre-American Revolution, many anachronisms, slavery is mentioned many times, capitalism, different ways of doing it, how did he construct this book, Thomas Chatterton, sailors hookin up with Jane Austen stand-in, 1770, 1771, extinct, or do they?, #SpiderWoman, few and far between, 19th century, movies in the 80s, all do go back to Arachne, LEGO Minifigures monster figures, fringe ones, women who tie you up in webs, Don Mark Lemon story, a fox’s tail, foxkin, the witch burning scene, I was totally a murderer, she’s selfish, off to London and do murders with her vampires, not a misunderstood wisewoman, ending Lord Of The Ring, I really wanted that ring, when you’re writing like this the subconcious is doing all the work, the sailor guy, the musician, pure of heart, sexual experience once that traumatized them, settle, the girl has her brothers, her father, he relationship with her horses, the waterhorse and its babies and its eggs, a cozy D&D, Barrels Out Of Bond, shot it sold it?, had she just talked to her horse, I was tied up by Indians and I learned to make a wigwam, house made out of sticks, portable house, sea voyages, into Robert Herrick, Thomas had read her books, a poet, stuff memorized, sailor or highwayman, didn’t like sailors except during war, upper-class lower-class, a character arc, she has motivations and backstory enough, things come up and over again, the bull to her cow, she was paying for it, she’s too fat, he wanted that character in the woods, her chaperone, you should do more hanky panky, any, hammocks, no hammocks, they’re out in yard, a water sprite’s house, sex in a hammock, you can’t lie separately, enforcing the cozy, a cheap bed, gas balloon, that guy Squirrel, it was fine, a circulation pattern, the lady can’t walk, its FANTASY with flashing lights, maybe read The Wizard Of Oz, very Ozy, pulchritude!, children’s fiction, a very sexless world, all of them don’t have genitals, hen named Ballina, the gnome at the end, is our goal to get them to read it?, nothing like anybody has ever written, A.A. Milne, horny Winnie the Pooh, all of the characters are different kinds of mental illnesses, the donkey, shyness, Pooh is a honey, Christopher Robin is the ID, Tigger is intellectually disabled, Kanga, funny to say, two horror movies out of it, what’s odd about Swann, history and myth, cozy setting, get horny, horny dwarves with small dicks, show worthy, People Of The Black Coast, a guy from contemporary USA flying across the pacific, find Gaum, strange island, cliffs and beaches, crabs, leaves her on a rock, he puts his hand to her heart, giant telepathic crabs, gets one his arms snipped off, they my GF I swear revenge, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, set in Florida, in Xanth, a fantasy world that borders Florida, exiled to Florida, puns and jokes, better plotted?, the popular version of this book, Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Dunsany’s wonderful, not writing carefully, an instinctually good writer, how could this book be great?, it could be better, guilt free sexual stuff, Puritans, being initiated, do they add up to a coherent whole?, an incoherent whole, modern, how much of a change is there, sexually repressed, I can’t have sex because I have a trauma!, they think they’re not good enough for each other, restraining not repressing, why you have no last name on this podcast, colonial themes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the land is eternal, a Swann thing, A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, newsflash Shakespeare good, The Tempest, Trish listened to five different audio plays, hot take The Tempest mid, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming Of The Shrew, Shakespeare wins, Schwarzenegger running meme, tiger blood guy, plot, dialogue, emotional manipulation, doesn’t lose, Othello, Iago is gay for Othello, motivated by spite, props, whatever they have at hand, fucking over a whole war, Titus Andronicus, The Induction, the inception of the play is we are the drunkard audience, there’s a play within the play, to catch the conscience of the king, reasonable thing to do, not as polished, the school prisons, hundreds of years, men dressed as women, library in the basement, let’s read more Shakespeare, the playwright, Christopher Marlowe, ‘Tis A Pity She’s A Whore by John Ford, two ees in pity, All The Flowers In The Attic by V.C. Andrews, it was huge, incest, reading it with one hand, just so good, I make students read it, A Modest Proposal, started laughing, solve it, expanded homelessness, that’s your goal, Jonathan Swift is savage, we have it for Gaza, one to one parallel, a pamphlet, harder to dismiss, feels like fiction even though it isn’t, what to do about the Irish, a very knowing American of my acquaintance, people can not get it, he goes to Japan, light material, heatwave, how do you listen to audiobook, work from home is a problem, chores, smoke cigars, when driving, in the 90s all week, shower speaker, you can get a lot listened in a week, five and half hours, reading text, eyes are busy, hands and eyes busy, nice park, at the gym, not enough hours in my day, fun side story, electromagnetic door locks, you can just buy those, a tweet about this, Matt Lauer, have used doorlocks in the past, three car garage, $80 to $100k, raising chickens, a house in a shipping container, jobsite sort of thing, shed conversion stuff, vehicles to store, the Cirsova story influenced by Swann, maybe next week, Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckely, The Loved Dead, Algis Budrys’ WHO?, Rogue Moon, Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, The Aeneid by Virgil, the losers of the Trojan War, their own legend, that’s our people, quite the way to go, the founding of Rome, distrust the propaganda, Romulus and Remus are Cain and Abel raised by a wolfish god, it deserved to be canceled, 8 episodes and cancelled, just setting the stage, can you give us the next Game Of Thrones, sad story, Shakespeare never had that problem, Richard The Third, low T Shakespeare, historical plays, Henry V, WWI Nazi, Ian McKellen, Magneto, not enough crossdressing, Merry Wives Of Windsor, Molière, The Country Wife, wants to have sex with all the other guys wives, lost his dick, Cyrano De Bergerac (1990), stuck on the rocket shoots him to the moon, character in the Riverworld novel, cuckhold’s Mark Twain, The Golden Ass, the French comic book adaptation, an odd choice, keep waiting for the golden ass to pay off, ass waiting, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, Billy Wilder, done as a diary, gets everything she wants, always going on dates with rich men, a trip to Europe, this is awesome, beautifully illustrated, 1925 book, Howard Hawks, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Big Sleep, the one with the leopards, the intercostal clavicle, His Girl Friday, really good, Only Angels Have Wings, so cozy, a remake of a silent, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Cary Grant, lady singer shows up on a boat, Casablanca, nature is the bad guy, really terrific, Jean Arthur, see you next week.

The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #806 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Demons Of Cthulhu by Robert Silverberg and Test Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins

The SFFaudio Podcast #806 – Demons Of Cthulhu by Robert Silverberg (from Monster Parade, March 1959) AND Test-Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins (from Terror Tales, May 1940) read by Mike Vendetti. These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hours 37 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Terence Blake, Mike Vendetti, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
two stories, the short one, the long one, the good one, or the bad one, isn’t that crazy?, sorry, Robert, step aside, well plotted, very Silverbergy, he’s getting paid and extra word here, he has to do three things, in comparison, forgetable, a pastiche, Demons and Cthulhu together, misunderstanding Lovecraft, 6 seconds before he started typing, the copyright expert, in the public domain, Lovecraft with very generous, didn’t write it under his own name, other than the name Cthulhu, Arkham, Necronomicon, trademark, a superhero story set in Metropolis or Gotham, a cease and desist from DC, something that can be argued, Gotham is not unique to DC, everybody does this, everybody knows this, I invented every part of it, we all use a common vocabulary, jamming two or more things together, you could make the case, a kind of Lovecraft exstate in August Derleth, by threatening the magazine, for a Robert E. Howard story, a Clifford Ball story, August Derleth wanted to own everything, the worst Silverberg story is passable, forgettable and silly, so predictable, Monster Parade, he’s operating in Lovecraft’s mode, a retelling of Dreams In The Witch-House, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, Monster Parade, March 1959, everything’s turned inside out, two Lovecrafty premises, structures and words, he can’t quite do it, he made everything, ephemeral, show you the moster, spell it out, tactile, what is that word, things that you can touch, tangible!, we shouldn’t be looking at the tentacles, Robert Silverberg doing Robert Silverberg, we should look at them, what a step up, what a great story!, pulpy as hell but, you don’t know who you’ve got, a thrill a minute, he opens it up at the end really nicely, at what point is she going to turn on me, love love love, an excuse to take her shirt off, nipples under there, the nipple Turing test, let’s get that shirt off, artificial intelligence, it learns and becomes more dangerous, amazing and awesome, the date, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, is 1940, preceding Sturgeon, better and quicker, almost like a Philip K. Dick horror story, The Thing [Who Goes There?] by John W. Campbell, that’s an alien, a vegetable, a worm that was ground up and pulped, minimal viable product for life to stay alive, to create intelligence, like Chat GPT with a gun strapped to its head, Amazon’s got a computer in the basement, you’re gonna get wiped, I’m trying, he’s hugging a worm that wants to eat him, survive and learn, the only place this story didn’t go, the ultimate, have the narrator not sure about himself, is there anyway to disprove he isn’t like that, all in retrospect, A Blob In A Jar, forgetfulness in the vine, the alcohol heated vapours of my brain, lock me up for a week at a time, it was memory, a former haunt called The Owl, Chester Vermis came in, mystery of the worm, he dreamed in minced, his beastly inferiority complex, of course it’s got an inferiority complex, is this before or after or both his consummation and replication?, everybody has had a desire to be something that he isn’t, wimpy chester, it learns and becomes a sexy lady, a lady in distress, that poor drunk, what’s wrong with the Silverberg story, an erotic edgy dark genre, normally a dark edgy erotic author, goofy, very gritty, very dirty, very tangible in a dreamlike mincing way, Monster Parade is not a weird menace or shudder pulp, a monster magazine, from films, the Lawrence Block werewolf one, a guy sitting on a park bench with his girlfriend, a photogaph, they’re trying to sell kids on monster content, especially in the 50s, a period of time before this is all filmed in the same way, horror movies in the 30s, they’re nothing like this, people use Test Tube Frankenstein a lot, with regard to fake meat, politicians, a very political phrase, a very good title, if you read Mary Shelley’s book, its not sewing parts together, its alchemy that he’s working with, growing things in test tubes, Frankenstein drawing, lightning etc. being grown in a giant vat, a homunculus, the anti-science people, you never know what you’re gonna get out of the test-tube, I’m not gonna get vaccinated, measles is back, chiropractor, the cover doesn’t match what is going on it the story, a way to lure you into the stories, mermaids being grown or captured, the same scene in a laboratory, textbook with chinese, blood looking liquid into a vessel, the interior art is amazing, can you write a story that can match this, and he did and it is awesome, Donald Dale, The Night Eternity Ended by , Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, all this awesome, Prey For The Daughter Of Hell, The Book Of Torment by Harrison Storm, leaders, Monsters Of Monarchy, a non-fiction feature about one of the emperors who was tortrurey, an awesome job, this story isn’t great, the experience of having Mike narrate to me, auctioneer, found himself retired, read some stories, every grandparent wants to read stories, kids want to be read to, to what we fundamentally need to do and want to do, the blandness of Robert Silverberg going through the backstories, he wanted to get some money, be a writer, he can’t put his name on it, he fills those pages, short and badly plotted, help to steal a book, guy makes a mistake in reading a book, the house is blown up, he filled those pages, the main character has an old 1940s car that he’s hot-rodding, sunken chest, here’s his backstory, treading water, that’s really nice, being narrated to, there’s no love from the AI there is love from Mike, isn’t that weird?, picture somebody you know and you’re reading to him, a word here or there or a lipsmack, very old fashioned article in the New Yorker, introducing audiobooks, LibriVox, inst that quaint, 15 years ago, people are driven by stories and wanting to be read stories, voice over people, something that wouldn’t flush, a job you do in between jobs, the market has changed for voices, Peter Berkrot put the Baby Ruth in the pool in Caddyshack (1980), Bronson Pinchot is basically an audiobook narrator now, vocal chameleon, I don’t need the performance, a high falsetto, a straight narrator, a much better solution, a back and forth, a couple of girl, this Terror Tales issue, don’t put it together in the same order, copyright compilation, get tripped up, editorial material, good advice, a little bit of safety suspenders, see the enthusiasm, wow this is cool, sci-fi is kinda passe, new readers, sex doesn’t change, started as a science fiction guy, Tolkien and a few other fantasy books, weird fiction late, these shudder and weird menace pulps, related to weird fiction coming out of Weird Tales, that relation, more base, being afraid and being sexually excited, an Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from within, fifty ways to describe the female form, son for lunch, monopolizing too much of the discussion, talk about me, that thing about the nipples, DALL·E art, the ai doesn’t know what its doing, the fingers problem massively fixed, a great great story, this story is packed with idea in a very pulpy packaging, palpating pulpiness, when it changes into its natural form, a milky colour, scary, basically a shoggoth, riffing, amorphous creatures that can take on other shapes and be a servant, a drunk guy who has a job, overseas to London to do some war reporting, just to fill pages?, lends a kind of subversive reading to it, or did he?you can image the sequel when he’s wrestling in the dark he’s wrestling himself?, is it wrestling or is he about to have sex, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, people think he’s weird, Guillermo Del Toro, an autistic kid for no good reason, made fun of him, he’s a giant insect, may have been a killer, fed his babies, he’s a female, the babies have flown out the window, a final nail in the twist, a chimney on a neighbouring tenement building, transforms and flies after them, we’re surrounded by things that are not what they appear to be, animals that look like other animals or things in order to survive, the chameleons or snakes that mimic the patterns of venomous snakes, a method of survival, almost able to pass the turning test, let’s go have a beer, the turing test is if you have nipples, do some more experimenting, crazy when he dismembered, off the cliff, each of those parts could absorb and grow, premised right at the beginning, not really arms and legs, disgusted, what are you gonna do?, this story could have been greater, a can of gasoline, poured it all over the thing, gone back to De Vermis’ lab, and im mailing this letter and that’s why, all found document, an appendix, I no longer recognize himself, an appendix after, I no longer recognize myself in these notes that I took, mental crisis, the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing, it’s open, how are we reading this document?, documents all the way back, grandfather’s documents found in the locker, grandma was one of these guys, even more Lovecraftian, that’s what we all are, a protoplasmic puddle, a dedifferentiated substance, he is God, Blood Music by Greg Bear, uses skills to increase science [Microcosmic God], ai is going to build the next ai, now there is a god, Asimov story or Clarke story, kicks ass and all pulpy too, makes the main character a coward, drinking to avoid his problems, covering the war, he just leaves, something to overcome, to defeat the monster in the end, an idiot plot, he fucks up, he looked up the wrong page, stupid, everything about that story is stupid, the chapter titles, A Blob In A Jar, In A Police Station, Abomination In The Boudoir, How Horror Feeds, A Moon A Girl And A Horror, that cliff at the end, images from these terror tales, a gothic, the precipitous ending, why are people afraid of heights, my friend might push me, a gust of wind might push me, I might jump, I can’t test myself like this, strange impulses, why the guy drinks, he can trust the drink, wormy things in his brain, the pickling of him, forget or avoid, the bar is The Owl, almost like this is a perfect story, if Jonathan had written this, coincidence, the newsroom or the police station, expanding the story, a contagion, just in the neighbourhood, what kind of replication are we getting here?, feed, reproduce themselves, not die, learn, have a mentor, love them and bring it up, to mimic, to learn, to survive, death is out there, how eyes were invented, or came into being, eyespots, detect light, find food, avoid predators, simple animals, seek light, avoid light, walking the streets, eating or not eating, the central core of the story, a sex maniac who turns himself in, very cool, very interesting, how do you know the whole police station isn’t full of them, fake police station, serial killer sex maniac, encounters something more horrible than he is, he’s psycho, worse than him, who the audience was for these magazines, ladies in jars, horrible men who need to be beaten by good men, bad version of the reader: just go straight to the rape, the good version of the rapist, okay, can’t we be more philosophical and find a bridge between the two stories, showed that he didn’t understand, demons vs. Cthulhu, something more terrifying than me, beyond good and evil, unrelective vs. reflective, Silverberg is the ai, minimally viable product, here’s the restriction and I’m going to go beyond that, Silverberg’s career, manic period, mediocre author, a manic depressive, not stratospheric, none of his stories are stratospheric, Ray Bradbury, what are the great Silverberg stories?, consistently good, trying to be a professional, comes out of nowhere, gutter trash, caught dead reading Terror Tales, great science fiction not packaged as science fiction, even more gutter, in terms of contempt, celebrity gossip magazines, gossip from the 1950s, not normal, lack of respectively means increased freedom for the author, talking about yourself now, transgressive authors, what’s the appeal?, why would I read that?, pushing the envelope, a story as good as this, based on the title, a particularily good example, very impressed with Test-Tube Frankenstein, not going to get taught in schools, push everybody’s doors down, the central core idea, noir and Weird Tales and science fiction, would make a great movie, set it in the period too, the war setting, from the pre-code era, synthetic flesh!, Doctor X (1932), that’s a song, sick biological experiments in secret labs, a distant ancestor to Videodrome (1983), long live the new flesh, a deep story, that guy has kink, kink is Cronenberg’s driving force, Golan Globus Theater, Escape From New York, a b picture from beginning to end, getting that shit up on the screen, Donald Pleasence, a backstory to explain why a British actor is the President of the United States, Margaret Thatcher has reintegrated the United States back into the British Empire, doing this on the cheap, when John Carpenter works, that’s awesome, low budget, cheapo techniques to get it done, a high budget remake, tell us the backstory of characters, you just need a guy named snake, everything is cynical, not even driven by sex, he’s cool, he’s cynical and he smokes, going above and beyond, driven by cool ideas, the extended middle, him not know whether to tell everybody, expose himself?, probably not?, how do we know?, how open the story allows us to be, Windom Wayne Robbins, a neon sign worker, 10 stories or so, an author that’s completely forgotten, very exciting, one hit wonders, in music and in fiction too, a fake phenomenon, a manufactured phenomenon, recording studios, too powerful or too big, possibly true with a lot of authors too, August Derleth, regional fiction, throws his weight around, gets attention far beyond his stature, buy more of my stuff, Concord Rebel: A Life of Henry David Thoreau, Solar Pons (Sherlock Holmes without the name), a different doctor assistant who tells the story, replacement Sherlock Holmes stories, asked for and was denied permission, some genuine interests, scumbag, stealing, lying, claiming authority, if he didn’t do what he did, he kept the torch alive, random people, advocating, writing for a local newspaper, there’s this guy Lovecraft who I liked, [Arkham Press], strikes against that claim, argue it counterfactually, counter examples, defending Heroic Signatures, trademark over a ton of Robert E. Howard stuff, the names are valuable vs. the meat of the stories are valuable, you need to use the character names, the glory of the prose, they don’t understand it, they don’t get it, sometimes Lovecraft is great sometimes he’s not, L. Sprague De Camp and Howard, the same idea, an estate there, [Kuykendall], synthesiszing the stories, Clark Ashton Smith, the Penguin edition edited by S.T. Joshi, rewrite the endings, dumb down?, high end, The Chain Of Aforgomon, a reclusive drunk, maybe the prose wasn’t perfect, idea after idea, the way of telling it, midnight tonight, Into The Bush, the reason we have to check her bush…, narrated by J. Manfred Weichsel, get a robot to say that, a Hollywood memoir, a novelization of a lost movie, 50,000 words, 7 hours, novel length, SFWA, books are better if they’re long, James M. Cain, slim 99 pages, 140 pages is fine, by the length, Audible is in charge, don’t participate, go on LibriVox, pirate it, the maximum experience of your life before you die, being a sharecropper for Jeff Bezos, kindle unlimited, the concept of the Creator’s Fund, at the top of the pyramid, 2000 ratings, why would that be good, then Jonathan could be rich, what I’m hearing is, why should he bifricate, writers need to make money writing, culture exists in the place where, we had culture before we had commerce, culture gave birth to commerce, your grandma telling you a story, trading with grandma, trade a smile, go to the grottos, to consult cave paintings, a bit tricky, culture related, not a lot of cash being transacted, a ledger, guy at the front of the cave, give me a bearskin, an amazing experience, some neanderthal tour guide, the end of capitalism backwards in time, the commercial end of podcasting, not what’s hot, some people will enjoy this podcast, not trying to grow the audience, if the audience really wants they can come on the podcast, more interested in the conversation, the merch, should I have substack with a subscription, patreon levels, Scott made two SFFaudio mugs, near when the website has started, the market is saturated, a respectable person, mugs are available everywhere and basically free, platforms making a ton of money off of people’s writing, extracting value, if you monetize it, you are being stolen from, they demonetize you too, a way of extracting value, what audible does, they’re like Harkonnens, they don’t even the nice Atredies face, an achievement in science fiction, that lady cried way to much, she cries again and she vomits, she’s in the desert, take the bodily fluids from a dead person, Stilgar says don’t vomit, not a good movie, she can transform the water of life, the new Dune, too old for Dune, intellectual young adult fiction from long ago, the best work John W. Campbell ever did, tears streaking down her eyes, I spit on that and not in the way Stilgar would approve of, a great gift, 2.5 hours or a little more, a treatise on complex thinking, a checklist of things, long scenes of the scenery eats up time, story points, really unfortunate, just stick to B movies, didn’t care about the backstory, an interview of Villeneuve, Chakobsa battle language, by immersion, an invented language, redid the scene, big A movie, vomit and cry, spring break, here’s your homework, The Terminator (1984), Predator (1987), that’s an education, from China, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), he can read the text but can’t understand the words, beat after beat, an awesome fuckin movie, passed out for most of it, wizards doing a laser battle, Jack Burton’s the greatest, a complete takedown, romance, Chinese tongs, a little tweak at the end, B movies are where it’s at, giant sculptures of hands, breasts, eyes, noses, he can only feel, he can’t see, chasing her over a sculpture of a woman’s body, confirm future stuff, Cat-Woman, Attitude by Hal Clement, The Not-World, plop or pop, The Journey Of Joenes, the funniest story from Weird Tales: The Loved Dead, who wrote, super hilarious, dripping with necrophiliac love, recounting the story from a graveyard, he’s so sexually excited about being a graveyard, so good, this Vendetti guy, opening two paragraphs, insatiable desires, the dead that I love, worn smooth by devastating centuries, sepulchral sentinels, an august monument, a spectral chieftain of a Lemurian horde, the aroma of Elysium, just new dead bodies, got Weird Tales in trouble, The Lurking Fear?, The Unnamable, cancelled and banned, too horrible, Spicy pulps, not as much censorship as there is now, there’s moral panics after WWII, the Satanic Panic, EC comics in the 50s, the film code, a self-enforced thing, same thing that’s happening now with TikTok, before Elon Musk got his grubby hands on twitter, they have a cozy relationship, the big threat to corporations is we could regulate you and enforce the law, the Washington Post, the NSA supplying harddrives, he is the government in a way, Popular Publications, Street And Smith, these were not monopolies, the land for the distribution of magazines, by 1959 they’re in a massive decline, almost no magazine distribution, comic book direct distribution, comic book shops, Diamond Distributing stopped distribution during COVID, one guy and opportunism, state governments were censoring, self regulating is the worst kind of regulating, Pornhub has blocked Texas, VPN, people use them a lot, a technical problem for most people, truth that people don’t want told, Matt Taibbi, micro utube blogging, people on TikTok lose their minds, develop tourettes, that philosophy tube lady, trans woman, getting paid by the British government, a man stole my work, a man plagiarized my work, women money and the nation, how women need to get together to prevent men from plagiarizing, sexy as a female, the whole video is I read this book, women are being exploited by men, a very popular youtube channel, more than a million views, BreadTube, Destiny (streamer), gusano, worm or parasite, de vermis, apologies for bombing Gaza, massive audiences on streaming, it could be that, they just boost the algorithm, debate bro mentality, a coalition of left-wing youtubers, hijack the algorithm, x becomes very popular in the algorithm, let’s talk about this today, artificial boosting, and the deboosting of the competitors, a synergy, I read this book, a set change and a costume change, man, there’s a lot of costumes, sets, knives all over the counter, the content level is a little bit low, this person read all these books, received opinions, I mad somebody made me work for free, as a writer or copyright holder you get between 20 and 40 percent of retail sales for your book, ebooks, fair, trending topics on Twitter, let’s talk about the SFFaudio Podcast, not big enough to cancel, digging up dirt on Paul, get him banned from getting his Hugo, just look at the shownotes, is Paul still canceled?, not checking his twitter account, how addictive it was, can’t quitting it, an outlet on Bluesky, a transfer addiction?, an all day tweeter, a little less, Bluesky is not very exciting, everything is transgender gay, friending the wrong people, the discover tab, spent half an hour trying to find Jonathan, a cloud?, a droplet, they should call it a tweet, Paul mentions Jonathan, in bold type, censored book covers, the link preview doesn’t show up, so fuckin prude, pretty tame, not for the modern era, Jonathan’s BlueSky action girls as the Patty McGloop’s pubic region, they hate Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do which is bend, censorship, he’s a child in many respects, a science fiction guy interested in libertarian stuff, Grok, getting banned for a week, that is pretty provocative, the algorithm of how man people hate on his shit, a lot of fake accounts liking things, the fake problem, using it to fuck around with accounts, real accounts that are fake, make an account to troll, pornbots liking everything, we should report bots, so many pornbots, the weird and spicy, Pulpcovers retweeted it, free publicity to something immoral, these fake accounts will not exist in 7 months, a phase, comments on youtube that were pornbots, nobody behind the scenes, employees, very easy to make an account, if the traffic doesn’t bear it out, how to tamp it down, somebody gets catfished, pornbots catfishing each other, is Philsophy Tube catfishing us, there are nipples but…, playing to us girls, a cartoon, or a self-satire, get past it get past it, it can’t be fake it must be real, a sincerity behind the insanity, Mi6 agent, Terence is more popular on Twitter, historical followers, some interest, more combative, decided to be more mellow, the philosophical scene evolved, tempted to refute or criticize a video, there’s something about doing it in the audio visual form that neutrualizes you, words by themselves, text on a white background, the account wouldn’t exist, took my labour for free, understand and get vengeance, this costs a lot of money, the whole point is the costume not the content of the words, more solipsistic, most of those followers, the overlap on our accounts, Bryan Alexander, Archibald Lampman, a dissertation, Mirko, Wayne June, Marissa still on twitter, she really didn’t like Jimmy Dore, Trish, Bobby Derie, Teksupport Top Jeet, a funny troll, Nina Power, following 4300 people, don’t tweet interesting stuff, not a self-own a self explain, for self expression, Cirsova does good attention stuff, tweetin all day about things that are political, why don’t you tweet political things, don’t want to be followed for political takes, doesn’t stop Stephen King, reputation has plummeted, ruining his reputation, cooking recipes, reminds you he exists, he can do anything now, serve a reminder purpose, the connections between politics and people’s brains, the J.K. Rowling one, a TERF, the more you drill down, it’s just a slur, she’s not actually horrible, she’s not going along with the narrative that men are women, men aren’t woman, a radical feminist, isn’t striking enough, Smurf, astroturf, real TERF, Nina Power is a TERF, she thinks girls are different from boys, women have something to contribute to the conversation, biology more weight than the performativty thesis, thinking things through in public, a public intellectual, fairly intellectual, takes that are not stupid, she’s quote mining them, no where near in the same league, perfomatively sexuallizing herself as part of a dance of attention, neurotic, thinking about this, thinking about that, fans are Slans are in fact neurotics, a fucked up behavior, deal with it as best they can, the trend, every tweet into promoting your stuff, provocative part is the attraction, inverse correlation, goofy sword and sorcery, Jesse’s stories, use Chat GPT to write tweets, writing the prompt is more work, write one prompt and write 6 tweets, an example of one, Get ready for a wild ride, Bing Chat, write some tweets that promote the book, itching for a new adventure, dive headfirst, doing horrible, cover reveal, 11 retweets, poll got a 1000 views, 23 votes, saying what you think, new ways to game the system, like it was totally normal day, not AI, election day in the USA, none of you are American, Guy Fawkes day, Neil Gamian selling all his stuff, Alan Moore, sold it for $130,000, this guy who’s not really into money, collecting shit, author signatures on books, this is stupid, the books own me rather than I own the books, profiting from it and not thinking it’s kinda weird and embarrassing, this touching story of an artist giving something to another artist, the difference, that contrast between Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, very careful about not becoming a TERF, a skilled man, has Neil Gaiman ever been canceled for anything?, he’s the blob, a morally treacley sweet blob, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Brandon Sanderson, he’s taken on Audible, donations on Kickstarter, kinda weird, donating money to rich people, the Mistborn trilogy, wordy, fill pages, all of Proust, a million times better, 41 million dollars, a billionaire?, Elantris guy, self-publishing it, probably due to his religion, a certain set of values, help his community and people in general, he’s a hero, the takedown piece making fun of him, advocacy, triggered Jesse, what they took with them, raise awareness, Gaiman is a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund guy, board of directors, a big comics guy, advisory board, in 2022, supported Ukraine, donations to Ukrainian refugees, where’s his Gaza tweets?, not all over it, drilling down, litigation, copyrighted blah blah blah, smart at playing the game, all his TV shows, somebody is enjoying them, using his power to fight Audible.com, the lesson is don’t be a hero, probably wise for most situation, the story of Dune, very pedegogical, is there going to be a Dune 3, Dune Messiah, a Bene Gesserit tv show, Brian Herbert territory, Kevin J. Anderson, for no good effect, filled time, with one great story and an okay Silverberg, Cordwainer Smith and Leigh Brackett, Who? by Algis Budrys, a cassette audiobook of his, Rogue Moon, big on paperback, summaries of it, hardened adventurer, playing a game of mystery box, that’s who he is, very worrisome, they’re free, free stuff on Audible, you’re paying an account, just pirate it, give it to Connor or Philosophy Tube lady, new gloves for a new dress, Nina Power talking about Philosophy Tube lady, Norman Finklestein, Lex Friedman, Destiny, how stupid Destiny is, “a fantastic moron”, Yes, Minister, Yes, Prime Minister, the topics are still modern, incompetence, schooling, a plan to fix some problem, we care about the unions, what is actually going on, the level of joke riding, a 350 word sentence that is just basically no, a special pause, are you going to edit this out, what a great year, best movies of 80s year by year, this is a terrible list, 100 greatest movies of the 80s, Miracle Mile (1988) is an excellent film, Aliens (1986), Near Dark (1987), kinda like The Lost Boys (1987), vampires drive around in a van, Airplane! (1980), The Vanishing Point, Peter Greenaway, Amadeus?, Atlantic City (1981), old Burt Lancaster, Jane Campion, surpirise clap, The Piano, Jodie Foster playing a deaf lady, Full Metal Jacket (1987), more of an experience than an 80s movie, Police Story (1985), Heathers was good, Women In The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown, Possession (1981), divided Berlin, The Killer (1989), Joel and Ethan Cohen, Desperately Seeking Susan, Back To The Future (1985), very unfortunately, a good movie unfortunately, Akira, Broadcast News (1987), [Network (1976)], Cutter’s Way (1981), temperamental Vietnam vet, hardcore, powerful, My Dinner With Andre (1981), Purple Rain, Modern Romance, another Albert Brooks, Roger & Me, Thief (1981), James Caan comes out of prison, Michael Mann, burns his own house down, does his stealing on his own, Aliens (1986), every great movie from the 80s, Fitzcarrado, Klaus Kinski, an epic scene, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), She’s Gotta Have It (1986), After Hours (1985), a good movie, inspiring, stand up to your boss, a pre-Fight Club, 10pm on a Saturday, Road Warrior (1982), Harvey Milk, better and better as we go down, Decalogue (1989), Reds (1981), pee red with blood, My Neighbor Totoro (1988), The Elephant Man, John Hurt, striking it from the list, Fanny And Alexander, Risky Business, incestuous, The Live (1988), Wim Wenders, sectarian violence, Spinal Tap, The Terminator (1984), they can’t learn to watch black and white movies, he wouldnt be able to and he wouldnt do it, vocabulary jokes and pointed political commentary, you have train up, how to connect that to the more subtle stuff, E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, The King Of Comedy, if you can’t grok RoboCop (1986), The Elephant Man meets Terminator, Paris, Texas, The Right Stuff, an interesting movie, An American Werewolf In London (1981), Blow Out, Brian DePalma doing Hitchcock, biased against Jeff Daniels, pooping on the toilet all the time, Raising Arizona, The Shining, Die Hard, if he was a genuine girl, an actual female XX student, a Y chromosome in your mix, Brazil, too esoteric, The Thing, Come And See (1985), Old Testament, Nazis invading Belorus, age a thousand years, Sex Lies And Video Tape, way to meta, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Errol Morris documentary, Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Jim Jarmush, Blade Runner (1982), they had trouble getting into it, shoah 1985,. it’s okay when I watch it, just watch Scalzi instead of Blue Velvet, Raging Bull?, Videodrome is number 2, an idiot list, Do The Right Thing is number 1, fuck right off, not better than Videodrome (1983) or Terminator or Aliens or even Stranger Than Paradise, The Hundred Greatest Movies Of The 1980s, the lost decade?, 11 authors, all the cultural ferment of the counterculture gradually died down, a conformist 80s, Regan bad, there’s other things happening, terrible, there’s some good movies on this list, a Rolling Stone article, Denise Crosby, buncha nobodies, set in Los Angeles, overslept, some guy in a missile silo, get to safety, the next 90 minutes in nearly realtime, the all night diner, we think it’s real, some evidence, a growing panic in the city, a social contagion or independent information, sounds really good, solid independent almost science fiction movie, Bill Paxton is good as a vampire, Chow Yun Fat, a John Woo movie, romances where men point their guns at each other, action packed, deviating, too small an idea, not used to nuke fear, Bomb Culture by Jeremy Nuttall, no no we’re not intending anything, you have to train up, The Road Warrior is self explanatory, the best order, 90s are pretty bad for movies, Terminator 2 is on the list, 100 Greatest Movies Of The 1990s, Rolling Stone again, 20 authors, Leonardo Di Caprio is cute, Clare Danes was cute, the lady from Homeland, The Ice Storm, Orlando, Singles, anything with Tilda Swinton, Usual Suspects, Lone Star, John Sayles, Brian Eno, queer cinema, A Brighter Summer Day, Taiwanese movies, Titanic, Swingers, Last Night, Don McKeller, set in Toronto, Raise The Red Lantern, Election, Bad Lieutenant, masterbating in his car while investigating murder, Shawshank Redemption, City Of Lost Children, Shindler’s List, Before Sunrise, Edward Sissorhands, Ed Wood, Vincent Price, the cuter softer comedic version, When We Were Kings, La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Sátántangó (1994), black and white for no reason, Jackie Brown (1997), finally found a good 90s movie, Audition (1999), horror romance, Clueless is a good movie, Being John Malkovich (1999), Scream (1996), Seven (1995), Wild At Heart (1990), Laura Dern, Metropolitan (1990), Heavenly Creatures, Peter Jackson, To Sleep With Anger (1990), Breaking the Waves (1996), Starship Troopers, Lion King‘s on the list, Crash (1996), All About My Mother, The Player, Crumb, Trainspotting, My Own Private Idaho, Princess Mononoke (1997), Heat (1995), Out Of Sight (1998), Rushmore (1998), Eyes Wide Shut, another fuckin AIDS movie, Barton Fink (1991), Fight Club (1999), Reservoir Dogs (1992), The Matrix (1999), Boogie Nights, giant fake penis, Fargo, the TV series, Beau Travail (1999), Groundhog Day (1993), Live Die Repeat (2014), The Piano (1993), unless you’re a girl and like New Zealand, when all the exams had been done, applied arts, Chungking Express (1994), The Lack podcast, Malcolm X (1992), Slacker, kisses his girlfriend’s foot, stylistic choices that hurt his films, too clean, he’s not angry enough, Slacker (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), good and unavoidable, Silence Of The Lambs (1991), Manhunter (1986) is a better movie, Dennis Farnia, Tom Noonan, William Petersen, very Miami Vice, Safe (1995), another AIDS movie, Star Wars is giving me AIDS, too American, Goodfellas (1990), less good movies to pick from, John Carpenter movies of the 1990s, Cronenberg movies, The Fly, Scanners (1981), The Dead Zone, Naked Lunch (1991), M. Butterfly, eXistenZ (1999), A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises, Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis (2012), The Shrouds, personal and autobiographical, The Brood (1979), feminist critic, misogynist representation of women, Dead Ringers (1988), they gender flipped it, now all the creepy things he does with his vagina tools will be perfectly fine, same red uniform, when they came out, Christopher Walken, the TV series, Monsters, an adaptation of Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson, outstanding stories, The Night Wire by H.F. Arnold, a new recruit to the NYPDs special detachment to the subways, suppress the inhabitants, the CHUDS, C.H.U.D. (1984), doing a genocide for about 100 years?, that’s the whole story, she’s pregnant she’s eating for two now, secret genocide under New York, other episodes, Daily Motion, based on a story by Robert Sheckley, your best fiend, rewritten to be funny and good, Sheckley is better than Douglas Adams, John Sladek, satire, robot stories, I-click As-i-move, a new Sheckley, what a good issue, two Sheckleys in here, a pretty good line up with Ray Nayler and Ken Liu, it’s late, wife keeps coming back, up north to sister’s house, mother-in-law, George C. Scott movie on the Iberian peninsula, actual wife, character’s wife, went north to get a breast lift and never came back, The Last Run (1971), an existential action movie, it was all right it was okay, Jesse doesn’t know what he’s talking about, best 70s movies, top 100, Sorcerer (1977), The Wages Of Fear, so many great 70s movies, Rocky Horror Picture Show, F Is For Fake, Annie Hall, Smokey And The Bandit, Wanda (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Fellini, Amacord, Young Frankenstein (1974), philistines!, Suspiria, so red, The Taking Of Pelham 123, Fantastic Planet (1973), Gates Of Heaven, Oms En Série by Stefan Wul, Slap Shot, The Wicker Man (1973), really good, very sad, Harlan County, USA, Day For Night (La Nuit Américaine), Jacqueline Bisset, The Deep (1977), The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Coffy (1971), Pam Grier with a shotgun, Breaking Away (1979), Stalker (1979), Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, Barry Lyndon, Rocky, Halloween, Days Of Heaven, Grey Gardens (1975), Don’t Look Now, The Parallax View (1974), Warren Beatty, Enter The Dragon, all the Bruce Lee movies, Richard Pryor, Scenes From A Marriage (1973), it’s Ingmar Bergman, The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), artsy, David Bowie, Walter Tevis’s Mockingbird, an excuse to walk the mirror, Being There (1979), Cabaret (1972), Jean Luc Godard, The Conformist (1970), Rope (1948), Jimmy Stewart, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), she was before all that, All That Jazz, Roy Scheider, The Long Goodbye, Elliot Gould, very jazzy, Robert Altman, The Exorcist (1973), Celine And Julie Go Boating (1974), Alien (1979), The Conversation (1974), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), George Hamilton, Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981), Jaws (1977), Joker (2019), everything I like except for cannibalism, The Godfather, Nashville, Killer Of Sheep (1978), wondrous, maybe it is wonderful, Blazing Saddles (1974), Godfather Part 2, the musical, they didn’t have the strength, best fantasy stories ever, heavily weighted towards the most recent books, we’re done with these stupid lists, renewing with science fiction after a 20 year gap, ideas for the future, pretty awful comments, lists with useful comments, identity of the other and it’s a heist, gimme the premise of the book, let’s see where it goes, knock off gold, it was summin, reorganize it, a controversial tweet, I’ll see The Conformist once you’ve seen The Last Run, True Detective: Night Country, slow then fast in the last episode, facile, a consensual watch, a non-consensual one was science fiction, a secret vice, APPLE+ tv, very limited, Constellation, Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks, her husband is surprised, they have a blue car, a nice ripoff of a few science fictiony things, shownoting a big cast of talkers, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, September 2nd on a Saturday, pre-Alzheimer style memory, the audio drama, good either way, talk to fast, the listener, we get on the record, checking your own work, bad takes from 7 months ago, so smart, different lady, different little girl, got confused, a show from 2017, The Call Of Cthulhu episode, Joe Rogan talking to Jordan Peterson, what a great show it was, the wrong direction, things change, not seeing a lot of Marissa on the show of late, evolved, why are you wrong, Jordan Peterson is bad, also has good takes, he’s horrible but says lots of good stuff, tweets things, collectivists, intellectually offended by you being so dumb, make mistakes, that person’s written off, George C. Scott movie, reverse psychology, dropping little seeds that grow up to be plants of hate later, a William Blake poem, miniseries based on the book, 2024 film, they had guns, Roy Scheider, euroactors, Tangerine Dream, find some food, make some coffee, James Tiptree Jr is kinda evil kinda awesome.

Demons Of Cthulhu by Robert Silverberg

Demons Of Cthulhu by Robert Silverberg

Terror Tales, May 1940

Test-Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – READALONG: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Jonathan Weichsel, and Alex [Cirsova] talk about The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, 1967, DAW book?, ACE, Alex was a big fan, how come I never heard of him?, the audiobook existed, nobody had pirated it, special work, a list, why this particular one, the old Ace paperback, The Minotaur trilogy, most well know, Cry Silverbells, The Forest Forever, The Day Of The Minotaur, fun fantasy, a particular kink, good narrator, he was okay, the female voices, a female narrator, feminine language, same takeway, chapters 1 – 4 are perfect literature, seducing, the rest of the book 5 – whatever are imperfect, the flaw is in the plotting, go from one place to another, why does Arnth return to the town, Swann knows this, no real reason, Tannaquil, no motivation, well I escaped that net, a slave uprising, the weirones, a little more careful plotting, the language, the imagery, the themes, the worldbuilding, really magical, the naivete, that it had a plot, the kidnapping, enslavement, a sex fantasy, even the ones that are knowing we’re naive, erotic artwork, Pompeii, even cuter, traveling exhibitions, fauns and satyrs, Herculaneum, a classicist, a student of classic period, vast encyclopedic knowledge of antiquity, what if all of the myths from antiquity were literally true, a Dunsanian mold, why are they heartless?, they’re fairy creatures, they’re not human, they’re not gods, centaurs have two hearts, mythology, celtic mythology, the Christian god, god was getting tired late on the 5th day, fully antiquity, the meta-narrative across all of his books, the retreat of fey up until Christianity, The Gods Abide, early Christian Rome, because of the spread of the Christian faith, compatible with some other set of beliefs he had, ancient Etruria, UNESCO World Heritage protected, narrow to the exact year, the Rape of the Sabine, having happened, we can do it though, set in our world, panisci, the corn sprites, what about the fossil record, does that mean they don’t have bones, a weird kind of fantasy, set in our world, Robert E. Howard, urban fantasy novels, vampires or werewolfs, Doggerland, why am I even focused on this?, let’s talk about you having no heart, fossils, approaching this with hard SF bone, her heart starts beating, mostly what this book is is sex fantasy for everybody, chill and relaxed, until everybody gets killed, that’s a sex fantasy too, a Marxist with 7 cats, orgy of revolutionary violence lead by cats, making a claim about the past reality, everything we know about the ancients is true, science fiction brain, when they die out how do they die out, stopping having children, what do they do with their dead?, sarcophagi, buried archaeological things, temples underneath the earth, speaking of buried, our bear barely gets to do anything, Ursus, the eye-patched bear, he got a girlfriend in the end, dancing or trained bears, Eastern Europe, animal cruelty, the romance, that seduction scene, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read, the central core idea of the book, French erotica movies, Emmanuelle (1974), have big passions, not remotely artistic, Sylvia Kristel, softcore erotica, late night tv, non-erotic movies, airplane accident movies, the decline or death of the fey, the macroscale, the meta-narrative, their encounter with humanity, tragic, leads to a little bit less magic, fey has to retreat, the resentment of the fey, kill all the fauns and centaurs, the sprite sorceress, costs her her life, a meaningful connection, temporary and passing, pure sensuality, feeling pretty bad, not that sympathetic, a violent guy, kills all these people, you only hate him because you didn’t know what he was or refuse to see it, throws himself on the axe, his own hands that do him in, homosexual themes in these books, a Biblical one, how are the mighty fallen, rubbing the wine off, sweet musician, just friendship, breaks him, fey people, pretty interesting, that Jesse is obsessed with, she becomes the thing she says she will never become, becomes obsessed with him, pure and innocent person with a real love and passion for her that she’s met, is this like a joke?, the heart of the book, our main character is not having sex with women because they’ll trap you, can’t bear his child, not the right class, playing with some interesting stuff, chronic white girl syndrome, my compassion will be reciprocated, magnanimous gesture for someone who is low class, these people resent her, she didn’t want him to be her slave, she wants to help free him, she’s shocked by the notion, once he’s murdered and their chains are off, give it multiple readings, a little wolf-puppy, grows into a wolf and eats the family, wicked and evil and heartless, she’s a spoiled rich girl, she’s so great, they rise up and kill her, the wicked slaves, the book intentionally gives these things the double meaning, the book intentionally doesn’t pick sides in these sociological debates, the sensuality, the food, the warmth, the cold, the bodily feelings, drinking the wine, the immediate attention to sensuality, Dunsany is ironic, cutesy, there’s no bent toward sexuality in Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, a celebration of life, and the joys of living, the rustic, the pastoral, the pastoral vs. the urban, an attention to the body, people’s skin like an otter’s skin, Sutrium is small, taste, texture, smell, every meal, the coziness of somebody in your sleeping bag, hammocks, can I sleep in your hammock, do we have to sleep?, assume this is throughout all of Swann, a particular fetish, really cute, his biggest influence is A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh, tea and honeycakes, 100 Acre Woods, everybody is fucking everybody else, Piglet and the sad donkey are getting it on, Kanga’s got a baby, Hobbiton, look there’s an elf Mr. Frodo, nobody in Middle Earth fucks anybody else, there’s no female hobbits, reproduction, incredibly focused on the sensual, visit Italy, a book of the mid-60s, early 20th century, Science Fantasy, Donald A. Wollheim, David and Jonathan having a relationship, a very specific kink, fits as fantasy, a writer writing what he’s interested in, literary, the magazines that would take him, fashion for retelling Greco-Roman mythology, out of time, read another one of these, barely a plot, stuff happening, sensuality and spending time with a bunch of fey in the forest, unique, doing something off in his own world, if you work on the internet, people who are passionate about Swann, producing these audibooks, doing reprints, the reviews online are hostile, 2 stars on audible, an audience mismatch, an American thing, very prude Americans, people just don’t understand the breadth of fantasy, sword & sorcery, a Tolkien clone, cosy sensuous fantasy set in antiquity, the sex element, depicting sexuality is wrong, this is the focus, tastefully hand, it’s beautiful, he really digs it, cottagecore, big push, fake cover, “everyone is gay for minotaurs and now you are too”, hampered, always 10 years ago, died way to soon, dying early is not great for being remembered, posthumously published, a body of work, the last handful of books aren’t as strong, a professor of English at the University of Florida, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a hero’s journey type plot, the late 70s, the good one, English language books, import book shop, Poul Anderson, set on actual Earth?, borders Florida, a magical border wall, exiled from the world, exiled to Florida, very cute, probably a good thing, Galactic Star, 55 years late, good that he won, a Hugo or Nebula nomination, the letter pages, because they don’t fit anywhere else, harmed, Good Show Sir, dunking on the covers, local independent bookshop, that book on that one cover, George Barr, Mark liked him so much, a brief biography, 1928, Korean War, Duke, Florida Atlantic University, literary scholarship, poetry, traveled extensively, WWI poet, The Not-World, DAW 1975, the last hideout, 2 centuries ago, the lore of the little folk, master of fantasy, one of his finest and most piquant, Thomas Chatterton, a balloon fight, Arachnae, spiderwoman, transposed to England the same sort of idea, against series, not a true series, some of the same characters, reverse chronological order, reconcile the differences, Cry Silver Bells, The Gods Abide, the final retreat of fey, The Green Phoenix, The Dolphin And The Deep, mythic Greek antiquity retelling of the Little Mermaid, will investigate his public domain status, mass market paperback, Wildeside, John Betancourt, a mix of public domain and regular, getting a narrator, never heard of him, writing really interesting books, why not, booking into the new year, Queens Walk In Dusk, the collected, a romantic type relationship, German fantasy author, Michael Ende, relationship with a minotaur, way too adult, Wonder And Whimsy: The Fantastic Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, consequences, fucking a centauress, gender, consequences for sex, even more dire, reliable contraceptive, sensuous, a problem for human females, kinda weird that he chose, paniscii, not the product of dudes running around the forest having sex with animals, the most reasonable impersonation, dudes are having sex with goats, minotaurs, half human half animals, we are our own separate creation, fey, transposing, Greco-Roman mythology, tweeting about how Swann treats the morality of the fey, touch on it, an alien morality unto themselves, what humans could necessarily understand, spitefulness, chaotic, unpredictable, morality, moral code, when humans have sex, they just do it, a right interpretation, tapping into something, that’s really cool, one of the two main influences, A Most Exquisite Specimen by J. Manfred Weichsel, Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, etymologist capturing butterflies, human butterflies played by ballerina showgirls, take the pin out, little dance number, a different plot, August [2023], Fall or Summer issue, see you in cyberspace, a pretty good show out of this good book, Mildred Klingerman, a young woman and a minotaur, Shirley Jackson, modern trad wife, Galactic Suburbia writers, domestic stories, Zenna Henderson, post-war domesticity, Letters For Laura, 6 pages, using euphemisms and language, copyright renewed, unlikely to happen, sure why not, if this show gets taken down, delete you from reality, full speed ahead damn the torpedoes, one of those, Dear Mom, A Cupful Of Space, Ballantine books, time travel, Love, Laura, my breasts are displayed in the style of ancient Crete, not who but what?, that’s the trouble with books, ancient Crete, so the minotaur wouldn’t eat her, they’re not as prude as people think they were, super-mainstream, visual, quite prudish, Clingerman stories, women’s magazines, now they’re both hungover, sleeping it off, working on his stuff in the garage, birdwatching, a dream that an alien is birdwatching her, exposing her lady parts, bye bye hangover, not super-prudish, stories for women, stories for men, Kay Tarrant, kinda prudish, there for fifty years, excised the erotic stuff, children read the magazine, prude, Slow Season by Robert Sheckley, Clark Ashton Smith, The Prize Of Peril, Das Millionenspiel (1970), better if you are German, such a different attitude towards sex, 1961 vs. 1965, double language, if you’ve seen those pictures there’s no top, with English subtitles, famous German comedian, The Running Man by Richard Bachman, Richard Dawson, the problem is he’s young, Family Feud, 1 year old in 1987, a unique style, human hunting, Suzanne Collins, Battle Royale (2000), PUBG, violence, hangups about violence, Evil Dead (1981), a censorious country, voluntary self control, if Jonathan took that job: “good I can censor some films”, juche, very particular to the Korean peninsula, worker’s uprising crushed, relying on other countries, allies turned their back on them, starve for a decade, the craziest stories about North Korea, a crazy story, Yeonmi Park, always lying, had to push the trains, local TV station, engaged in Pyongyang, desperately want to be a normal country, millions of people, Ukraine War, free fire zones, no buildings standing more than two stories tall, they didn’t lose, that’s amazing, they don’t want to win wars, they just want to have them, Grenada, Iraq – Kuwait, Bush War 1, Bush War 2, heating up in Iraq, seems like things are pretty bad, they wouldn’t put you in charge, Jonathan is the great unifier, a radical centrist, in a podcasting zone right now, sleeping 16 hours a day, contribute around the house, a lot of comics, mediocre comics, Mœbius, Jean Giraud, The World of Edena, have to eat natural foods, we should go to that planet, get yourself very dirty and roll around in it, dangerous in Canada, Quebec is very insular, engagement outside of Quebec, essentially its own country, East Germany, lovely talking to you, Franco-Belgian-Dutch[-Flemish] comics, a thank you, great bookstore employees, something expensive, one day she’s going to grow up and have money, Eurocon in Rotterdam, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, how many languages does Cora speak and read?, decent at Dutch, sell me on it, 19th century, most popular youtube video ever, an old book, LibriVox narrations, assigned at universities, the comments are interesting, Martin Geeson is the narrator, serialized in the London Magazine, upset and shocked by it, 1821, long walks, too happy to observe, humorous, interesting, drug literature, glorious imagination, acute speculation, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Charles Baudelaire, Boston Blackie, barn full of books, The Lone Wolf, radio drama, the early part of next year, Valentine’s Day, go die now, drink some coffee, The Cave Girl, the Lawrence Block, a thin volume, feel better, get better.

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann 1977

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann ACE

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann SCIENCE FANTASY, October 1965

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

Jim Burns art or Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

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Reading, Short And Deep #416 – Matin’ Place by Donald E. Westlake

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #416

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Matin’ Place by Donald E. Westlake

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

And here’s an transcription |PDF|.

Matin’ Place was first published in Escapade, August 1958.

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