The SFFaudio Podcast #577 – READALONG: I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #577 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein

talked about on today’s show:
Galaxy, July – December 1970, Robert A. Heinlein talking to himself, is this a kissing book?, sex talk, is there a person who doesnt get kissed, she had babies with the judge, my wife lets me kiss 10% of women, saving the incest for later books, a 1980s book, right after some of the big books, Friday is the last good Heinlein novel then he went crazy, 4 years after Frederik Pohl’s Day Million, only recommended as an artifact, rolling my eyes, listening at double speed, essentially the same thing over and over again, ultimatum, if you don’t do x I will fire you and leave the country, everybody is the same person, really glad Evan’s going to be on for this one, the world rather than the guy taking over the world with the talk – endless talk, its a guy who wants everything to be about him, I fell in love with lawyer, injecting myself with my own sperm, the biggest ego trip on the planet by the biggest asshole in the world, having Jake’s baby, he has it every way, socially it’s Jake’s baby, through his entire catalogue, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, Variable Star, closing on the worst, kinda interesting, way too fucking long, sigh, Evan despaired half way through when he’s already impregnated himself, there’s wonderful stuff here, being a document of the sexual revolution, forward thinking, keeping up with the trans-movement, you are your physical body, an internal self, (s)he performs as a woman, physicality, the Wikipedia entry is very short, a threesome, Eunice before she is murdered is swinging, Johan Sebastian Bach Smith, we’re from Mars, really cool stuff, less meetings would have helped Stranger In A Strange Land, get off the poolside bench and go get a job, their job is to talk with the sex crazed maniac, not through the news clips, very modern, all about billionaires and what they want, everything is a billion percent corrupt, very realistic, abandoned areas, what she thinks her job is is to perk up the disabled ancient corpse man, dress up as sexy as she can, before she dies, I don’t trust it, if you read this subversively, it becomes even more insidious, the worst thing about Heinlein, rape fantasies and child molestation, the conversations he has with himself, reading Larry Niven, everything seems to be working out, motivated by slightly different things, its sick and yet he really is on to somethings, the very strong class and financial stratification of society, the .001%, is this world really that bad?, where’s the rest of this society?, ending with Malthus, Mathusean arguments are stupid, The Population Bomb, Star Trek, The Mark Of Gideon, Stand On Zanzibar, Make Room, Make Room, geography, the water wars that are going to come, resource wars, Quantum Of Solace, invisible car, a problem of distribution, some of the least informative and least interesting part of the book, everyone was wrong at the time, pervasive throughout the book, the bugging, surveillance, he’s a brinksman, not everybody is you Heinlein, you can’t deal with everybody that way, wherever we go we take our phone, the universal communication device, more important that any piece of clothing or your house, universal bugging, rich people and royals, a member of the wedding party is sent to Canada, very fetching, your going to go to Canada to throw off the scent, every fucking relationship is tainted with money, the most ethical person in the book, he tries not to be corrupted by it, money is a problem, another theme that’s going on in here, rich people can’t and don’t have friends, it’s true, assets relationships and opportunities, body organs replaced, Bug Jack Baron by Norman Spinrad, Eunice’s soul, it has no connection, he wanted a threesome in his brain, a swinger book, they have sex with everybody except for the grandkids, the grandkids are “monsters”, how did that happen?, who caused that?, inveigle and puppet everybody’s life around him, they’re not competent, their all murderers and their black guys, I kiss them, let him save souls and I look sexy in this shirt don’t I?, is Heinlein addressing this in any sort of self-conscious way?, repossessing an employee of mine’s body, take her name, am I like Eunice, after you paddle me on the bottom in the way that I like, FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, so annoying man, people shouldn’t read Heinlein cause he’s so fucking annoying, Harriman never thought about that, Number Of The Beast, set in a dystopia that he caused by him and a few other people like him, my Clinton organization, you’re the one doing that, become a vegan like me!, strontium 90 in the Chinese milk, nuclear war, all the good stuff is made in China, this book needs to be Neuromancered, all he can do is threaten people with his money, build some fucking roads and infrastructure, constantly calling him “boss”, S&M language, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Sir Boss, boss instead of master, a very difficult book, novella length, an amazing explosion of ideas as in Day Million, reality bombs, if you were going to film this it would be a nightmare, endless dialogue scenes, the action all happens off-screen, nothing exciting going on, conversations in different lawyers offices, seriously? you’re, honor cherish and obey my husband, he’s not a good a person, this dude was into these ideas so early, All You Zombies is a transsexual story, he’s his own grandpa hahaha, he’s a guy from Missouri in 1907, if he was born in the 70s…, a heterosexual man interested in being a woman, heterosexual man becomes a heterosexual woman, gay street back and forth, omnisexual, he marries another old man, “born in the wrong body”, put into your right body, he’s thinking through these ideas out there on his own, Venus Plus X, [Myra Breckinridge (1970)], dresses and cuddling, the male gaze, do what thou wilst, sexual libertarianism, communities and movement cultures, really interesting, Evan’s been around this planet 40 some times, the self goes away, actors can act in a role, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlisle,

Sartor Resartus (meaning ‘The tailor re-tailored’) is an 1836 novel by Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine in November 1833–August 1834. The novel purports to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh (which translates as ‘god-born devil-dung’), author of a tome entitled Clothes: Their Origin and Influence, but is actually a poioumenon. Teufelsdröckh’s Transcendentalist musings are mulled over by a sceptical English Reviewer (referred to as Editor) who also provides fragmentary biographical material on the philosopher. The work is, in part, a parody of Hegel, and of German Idealism more generally. However, Teufelsdröckh is also a literary device with which Carlyle can express difficult truths.

this book sounds really fun, the clothes make the man, he’s wearing a white labcoat so its okay he’s putting his finger in my butt, a yellow vest, wearing a blue shirt at Best Buy, putting on the wrong uniform, girls protesting a rule they’re not allowed to wear pants to school, talking about a body as a piece of clothing, this suit’s looking better and better, just like Brad Pitt’s, meat sleeve, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, Case’s contempt for the flesh in Neuromancer, Linda Nagata, does this make me transsexual?, strip away the entire body, ultimately he concludes it wont work, the old transhumanist argument, Transmetropolitan, robot eyes, synesthetic neurons, we are what’s out there, the oppression of women throughout history is largely due to their bodies (not their femininity), a patriarchal society?, the Teresues myth, Strange Days (1995), the working title of Blade Runner?, the ship of Theseus, Bryan Alexander, I’ve had this axe my whole life I’ve been chopping trees with it every day this is the third time I’ve replaced the handle and the third time I’ve replaced the axehead, Jason Thompson’s adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft, what makes it valuable to me, if they market it properly, this famous dude named Jesse, an association copy!, this is a SPECIAL comic, The Pro by Garth Ennis, The Boys, my 30 year old car has every part replaced, two ships of Theseus, identity is a fictional concept or one that only applies with brains, 2 Os stuck together, ultimately any particular atom is not different than any other atom like it, the trial, the hearing, the (Trump) impeachment, yeah don’t care, from a poor person’s point of view, done to a poor person, exploring the same ideas, getting his sex jollies from everybody he meets, lets emigrate to the Moon, The Wizard Of Oz, this feels strange and skeevy, what the fuck man?, the Tin Woodsman (Nick Chopper), he eventually chops his own head off, eventually in the Oz series all of the cutoff armed and legs are rejoined into a golem, the better claim, what make a person a person a character, the cloning stuff, there isn’t really a good cloning novel, the idea of dealing with this concept and ultimately bullshit, Moby-Dick, an onion with no center, as you grow in life, greener or browner, all a mistake, an action adventure contest, put the key in the slot before the bomb blows up, if you met twins, Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Future Is Female, her second story is public domain, all these clones are having sex with each other, totally unequal power dynamics, how Joe was raised, his mom is a wino, Joe’s illiterate, his more artistic end of himself, not good at shopping, he’s the worst Heinlein when it comes to selling his books, Soylent Green (1973), its perfectly legal, Saul and Charleston Heston are in a gay love story, super-powerful, how could I know, a wonderful scene, a great book and also a terrible book that nobody should read, I remember regretting reading it, he had peritonitis while writing this, why this book is badly edited, why do you have these endless scenes of dialogue of going on forever?, the whole Moon thing, they’re all connected, a few hundred people there, frontier hypothesis, very Philip K. Dick, this tired old earth, that’s Elon Musk, yo, 1% are gonna move to Mars and leave us in our abandoned areas, a pipe dream, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, invite Elon Musk, I got lots of podcasts I want to listen to, Red Mars justifies its bulk, a few meetings in there, Jesse is not a fan of meetings, Mars was big in the 90s, Red Planet, a three month sabbatical from Heinlein, I wanna assassinate this Johann smith, the corruption, the billionaire class, Jeffrey Epstein, Joe was adopted by a painter who used him as a sex slave, no pants Smith, I might be a bitch but I’m not a cunt, I’m not a slut I’m a tart there’s a difference, the iteration, tarts give it away, he’s exploring, this sounds real bad, have you thought about the power dynamics here?, sounds like real bad fucking shit, this is not cool, we’re all consenting adults here, a very rich old dude gathering up congresspeople and senators and supreme court justice, this is not an equal relationship, literally pure evil, so selfish, I wanna be those people, you should be stripped of your powers, what you’re doing is monstrous, driving through in your armored cars, its NOT OK BOOMER, a powerful ideas man, Jesse benefited from it the first time, now I am an Ayn Randian, the last issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, you couldn’t pay me to read Ayn Rand, understand this dangerous concept, take in Heinlein’s idiocy, this astounding piece of exploration you’re going to get on this subject, I don’t wanna ever see a desk again, where Heinlein spent his time, it doesn’t ever say where it was, California?, no go zones, a compound for rich shoppers to visit, the speakeasy, the number of times he complains about chairs, how the chairs are very uncomfortable, 1980s baroque, Chinese screen, Chinese obligation, now I’m stuck in this chair, Heinlein’s office, a perfect unobtrusive secretary, panty ruffle, very buxom secretaries, the original Total Recall, they changed the title, the chair and the pain, the word cloud, OLD is the biggest one, SEX, LIPS, CAT, a book without a cat, giving away cats, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, an old man on a space station, he’s also James Bond, how similar Heinlein is to Philip K. Dick, self confessional, its all about fertility as usual, Heinlein’s sterile, the estate is a trust, meeting with lawyers and doctors, that striving for immortality in ANY way, the kid from Mars, a son who died in some stupid war, it doesn’t matter Paul, I know who it is, these granddaughters aren’t biologically his, clones himself in multiple ways, his own mother and father, all very deeply psychological, why this guy is interesting to read, it isn’t generic shit, the expressing of unspeakable irrational striving, his DNA wrote this book, whaddya want that sounds terrible, he’s exhausting, I’m glad he’s dead, am I wrong?, The Three Musketeers, Paul’s weird head-canon, Heart And Souls (1993), Luke Burrage’s head cannon, did he strip the kid of the money?, the major takeaway, money’s going to the Moon, the Moon is the baby, the Moon and the Moon landings are his baby, Destination Moon (1950), we can do this shit, he really was the leading exponent of this idea of SPACE PROGRAM, The Return Of William Proxmire by Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe, was he sterile because of all the STDs? the swinging for other ways?, super-super-important for him, maybe if I was my wife, kinda weird, not entertaining, you really should, we’re really fucking selfish and crazy, read it at double speed, Evan recommends this book, if youre interested in ideas this has them, sit on my lap, I will only marry you if you only, don’t make me be this intimate with you, I’m glad I’ve read it I’m glad I’m finished reading it.

I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein

I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein

I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein WORD CLOUD

Heinlein's Desk in 1986

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #210 – Hedone by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #210

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Hedone by H.P. Lovecraft

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.

Hedone was first inscribed in a letter dated January 3, 1927.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #560 – READALONG: Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #559 – Jesse, Marissa VU, and Terence Blake talk about Day Million by Frederik Pohl.

Talked about on today’s show:
a panel on the New Wave, reading the New Wave, stuck in Jesse’s craw, against movements, cyberpunk, that one William Gibson book, steampunk, as it was happening, H.L. Gold, Galaxy Magazine, John W. Campbell, Analog, not that, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, the label science fiction or fantasy, a reaction, quite impressed, really casual, the way it is written, the plot is pathetic, so meta, SF Impulse, mathematically wrong, 10,000 years from now, 1,000 years, the year 3,000, he’s describing 2019 or 1966, he met a girl and took her phone number, copyright 1966 by Rogue Magazine, a sub-Playboy, all the meta-stuff, just I guy who likes boobs, the whole thing is about sex, a direct injection of ideas, a little red convertible, how angrily you recoil from the page, who wants to read about a pair of queers, so innovative, transgender folks that are pronouns that aren’t male or female, the 1980s, born in 1919, sums up all of the issues we won’t care about, just getting used to the idea, 2012 review, what makes it feel old and dated, dude-bro, the dude-bros are back, the dude-bro phenomenon, click around on YouTube, all sorts of people, anti-gay sentiment from totally gay, women are all about peace, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney’s daughter, this dude whose reading a girlie magazine, interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1981, trending, a phenomenon, the last hurrah, the narrator is criticizing you, everytime there’s an objection, on this way I want to tell you about, a boy a girl and a love-story, none of it is true, undercuts, 137 years old, not a girl, the urge to rape and the urge to submit, psychology, a pedagogical lesson in what SF is, poignant sentiment, it sounds sarcastic and full of cliches, beginning with a hyperbole, just before the singularity, present day concerns, silly requirements long since left behind, the end, Spider Robinson’s podcast on this story, permission to read, what very well may be the ultimate science fiction short story, a lot of competition, edging out a lot of the competitors, more interesting, an introduction to science fiction, Robert Silverberg’s Science Fiction 101, a terrible story

And you—with your aftershave lotion and your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all night—tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?

boom, he dropped the mic, and walked away saying “I just showed you what science fiction is, yo.”, whisky, shaving everyday, everybody’s all beardy, ride horses and subdue cities, a man sits behind a desk, he bbqs stakes in the back yard, that is fucking weird, some of it is preposterous, the most normal stuff, VR stuff, personality copying, prosthetics, cavities filled, rude parts removed, organs, a new wave retelling of Scanners Live In Vain, Pohl fell in love with Cordwainer Smith, stacking up the famous science fiction writers, eventually you would get to Pohl, he was there the whole time, the opposite of Campbell’s movement, writing and editing magazines, he didn’t do the Moon Landing, with Cyril Kornbluth he wrote The Space Merchants, the Senator from Proctor And Gable, a book for millennials, sleeping on the stairs, near death of capitalism, a near singularity story, Don and his voyages, circled Alpha Centuri, agricultural implements, 10,000 planets, but you don’t care about that either, its people who make stories, making a concession, science fiction has no real characters or character development, full of circumstances, he’s mocking the reader, double meta reverse irony, you think I’m crazy, that part is boring, it doesn’t deliver what the readers want, oh my god, he’s right!, you don’t understand your place, there just different, offhand comments, you might be thinking about, they didn’t care, Dora is a dancer, the audience doesn’t care, you can’t make babies with her, that’s not natural, he responds to every dude-bro idea, “No”, I still don’t like it, Jesse’s two personalities, natural is good bullshit, everything is difference and everything is change, the smell of peanut butter, that she’s got a pelt, lives under the sea, gills, zero-g dancer, capable of deploying more energy that Portugal in a year, she doesnt sweat in the normal way, she’s up to peanut butter, musky honey, she’s more like a beaver or an otter, a platypus, he’s cranching all the time, getting his legs renewed, only the brain feels, the top tier of the middle class, the ads, an MG roadster, tennis rackets, cigars, cars, turtlenecks, a men’s fashion magazine, even the title, he gets about, a naughty wink wink, an aspirational lifestyle magazine, a tame rascal, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Hangover, hipsters WWII veterans, the many many anthology, Worlds Of Wonder, not for an audience that’s familiar with SF, for the thinking man who has boobs, the cover illustration for SF Impulse, a human female near the horizon, are you guys seeing what I’m seeing, those calypgean hips = nice ass, she has a tail, not literally childbearing, Podkayne Of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, conceived earlier and decanted later, birthing technology, plausibility, you can’t gill people up anytime soon, beyond the singularity for Jesse, birth control pills changed things a real fuckton, PROFOUND EFFECTS upon everything, thinking about science fiction as NOT about rocketships going to planets, incredibly valuable, its not supposed to be hard SF, an interesting shift, we could have sex for fun, how is this going to go, Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, a mid-life crisis book, lets dwell with this idea, quite an interesting book, it feels like mainstream fiction, what effect would that have?, he can do whatever he wants, like a crutch…, there’s one person who had a cellphone that’s connected to the internet we have but his battery is getting weaker and weaker, you don’t know how to fix it, imagine you had that superpower for 40 years, and that’s science fiction, everything you know that you think is normal I’m cutting away, all the ground falls out from under you, more Buck Rogery style of story, nobody was writing it at that time, but it was translating into film, once you need Day Million in 1985…, a secret sin, science fiction as the literature of cognitive estrangement, it is but not what you expect, the tears and poignant sentiment, it made her feel sad, intensity of emotion, just their memories of each other, they’re not really human anymore, maybe dying earth, the death of humanity, post-human stories, I don’t get you, a couple texting, c u next time, being unable to understand, an ant on Jesse’s kitchen floor doesn’t know what Jesse’s doing in the next room, magnitude, an ant can’t understand a flea, singularities cropping, we’re not supposed to be able to understand, when the curve suddenly changes direction, artificial intelligence, deciding to give up peanut butter, record it for LibriVox, The Men In The Walls by William Tenn, what the people who were talking, Mankind consisted of 128 people, so vast a horde, sometime ago Earth was invaded by aliens, vast their huge their massive, humans as rats in walls of aliens houses, that change of magnitude, not only in time, an incommunicable difference, Virgil Finlay illustrations, dude, podcast, that’s the one, we can do that then, Of Men And Monsters, even if you’re the only thing in the universe, copies copulating with other copies, they need to meet each other, they met at the encoding room and they blushed, do they have to do it to tape it, making a digital copy of themselves, kids today, looking at their phones lovingly, all that sensory detail with them, they have friends too, passion of kiss in symbolic mathematical form, a residue of flesh or body, supercomputer tinder, when they lived in Seattle with a bunch of friends and dating with OK Cupid, a traditional Hollywood Meet Cute, oh shit vs oh hell, the exhibition has an open fly, balls you say vs rats you say, everything is virtual, dose of fleshiness, masterfully put together, Jesse feels to privileged, that wasn’t universally true, a story from Weird Tales called Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, in 1928, an old man who gets his jollies from having sex with dead bodies, she came back to life, how could this be?, this does not fit, 1920s flappers, great grandma and great grandpa were swingers, “problematic”, losing their jobs, they published that?, have you met a 15 year old, no matter where you go you find humans in time, comforting, they’re just like us but their circumstances are different, that big gap, what the publishing industry is putting out, whatever I’ve been reading recently will inform the plots, whatever you put in you’ll get out, if you only prime yourself science fiction novels you’ll get science fiction novels, read widely, watching science fiction TV and want to write a novel, new drafts coming in, the camera is panning in around things, a new phenomenon too, comics that are written as adaptation to Netflix, the art’s good, designed to be adapted as a Netflix series, what’s new this week, so many show there is no way to keep track, you could never catch up, feeding that hunger mill, all the competition for Netflix is starting this month and next and next year [2020], 40 other shows to buy that day, sometimes that works, give me your most innovative story, he was editor of Galaxy and If: Worlds On Science Fiction, playing to the market, being terrible, they say Netflix on the side, a mill aspect, what the reaction of the New Wave is against, Algis Budrys, regular science fiction of the 30s and 40s and 50s, a monetary currency that had been debased, a bunch of tropes that were all worn out, telepathy, Ray Bradbury would use that same vocabulary and do his own thing with it, Heinleinian style Asimovian stlye, more internal, one human being failing, taking drugs on a ship, Charles Stross, a human observer, Ted Chiang, hermeneutics,

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg were broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, Chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the Mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.

“I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch. It’s my worry, isn’t it?”

When Luci answered, he saw only a part of her words as he read her lips: “Darling … you’re my husband … right to love you … dangerous … do it … dangerous … wait ….”

He faced her, but put sound in his voice, letting the blare hurt her again: “I tell you, I’m going to cranch.”

set in the same universe, the 1950s housewife, the other Cordwainer Smith story, The Lady Who Sailed The Soul, explain a photograph to a neanderthal, our way of seeing telepathy, we know what they’re thinking, accessible to the inner eye, a perfect reproduction, captures a moment, what difference does it make, everything is fantasy, everything out in the world is projection, fighting in a Battle Royale for a Chicken Dinner, romantic relationships can be…, the encoding room, their friends were there to cheer them on, are the friends physically there?, he’s a star man, on Wednesday, he takes all his friends with him, like Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi?, over there there’s Ben Kenobi, how much is virtual is ambiguous, I saw you on the bus you dropped your glasses, are you looking for me?, never lose those interactions, your ex-wife never becomes your ex-wife, and husbanded, the only thing we’re almost sure of, totally programmed world, atoms all fall down, all the rest could be 100% virtual, sometimes the requirements of the human need for storytelling requires a certain page count, two sentence long story, what day is it?, Day Million, that’s not the way we count, tweaking his audience’s nose, his tongue is firmly planted, these things are coming faster, in your lifetime, the sexy version is “Night Million”, how many words, wordcounter.net, all these things we couldn’t do before except by hand, 2,122 words, 2,500 words, a very cynical view of relationships, that dating farce, the instinct to submit, kinda crass, no chasing, too animal, it really changes things for women, the Vanderbilt on CNN (Anderson Cooper), he comes from billionaire stock, billionaire DNA, gay bath houses and sex sex sex, a very straight gay man, “c’mon man”, the BC Civil Liberties Association, always suing the border customs guys, somebody at the border, philosophy of law, the gay bathhouse phenomenon in Toronto, homosexual men don’t have to worry about babies, as much sex as they want, imagine if women if women don’t need to have babies, as many husbands as they want, it does change the female psychology, females are scarce, get the equipment or marry somebody, it really changes things, you all have to start acting like gay men, the numbers of transitioners, more modest?, more randy?, gay bathouse men from the 1970s, men now living in a woman’s world, modifying their behavior, how people are externally treating them, the whole phenomenon of Saudi Arabia, women in the middle ages in Europe, we gotta keep that all locked down, the whole chastity belt, you can do a lot without electricity,

SF Impluse - Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Stellar Audio - Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #203 – The Dream by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #203

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Dream by H.P. Lovecraft

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.

The Dream may have been first published in The Tryout, September 1920.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Shambleau by C.L. Moore

SFFaudio Online Audio

Here is Jayem Wilcox’s illustration for C.L. Moore’s Shambleau as it appeared in Weird Tales, November 1933, its first publication:

Shambleau by C.L. Moore - illustration by Jayem Wilcox from Weird Tales, November 1933

Her first professional sale, selling for $100, it is also her most famous story.

The LibriVox version, read by Roberta J, runs just under 78 minutes |MP3|.

C.L. Moore recorded her own reading of Shambleau, available below in two parts, for a Caedmon record (TC 1667) published in 1980:

Frank Kelly Freas’ did the cover art for the Caedmon recording:

CAEDMON Shambleau by C.L. Moore - illustration by Frank Kelly Freas

And on the back of the LP was an abridged “Footnote To Shambleau” taken from a 1975 essay of the same name:

Footnote To Shambleau by C.L. Moore (abridged)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #429 – READALONG: In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #429 – Jesse, Marissa, Mr Jim Moon and Wayne June talk about the Tantor Media audiobook In the Mountains of Madness: The Life, Death, And Extraordinary Afterlife Of H. P. Lovecraft by W. Scott Poole.

Talked about on today’s show:
a biography (not the novel), who would make that mistake, W. Scott Poole, The Extraordinary Afterlife Of H.P. Lovecraft, the writing style, some reservations, a very interesting book, S.T. Joshi, Michel Houellebecq, current thoughts about Lovecraft, have we all fallen into a trap?, there must be something wrong with him, first biography, I Am Providence, primary materials, letters to the editors, here’s Lovecraft’s vision, man, Lovecraft’s childhood, why do we care so much, a forerunner, his mom and his wife, everybody hears about Lovecraft’s mom: he’s hideous looking, the L. Sprague DeCamp biography, a strange man with an ugly lantern jaw, Stephen King, progressive and interesting, an open minded woman, his politics, cautiously taking issue, Lovecraft’s racism, history, a crock of bull, dismissing the man of his time argument, science, eugenics, racial theory, phrenology, condemns overly harshly, divorcing the work from the creator of it, celebrating his creativity without celebrating his politics, what if Rembrandt was a wife-beater, a conservative, his grandfather, a pedestal, we all get our politics from our parents and our family, unusual and extreme, not a happy fact, commonplace views, The Birth Of A Nation, bringing Lovecraft away, strange and creative, humanizing, they weren’t terrible mad women, playful, reading Shakespeare, annoying the neighbours, psychoanalysis, they must be psychopaths, a wax cylinder, Lovecraft’s singing was like a fox terrier being strangled, cats and ice-cream, good evidence, an admirable person, an only parent, every kind of toy, chemistry sets and magazine subscriptions, school as torture and punishment, she sounds awesome, expand your mind in different ways, he’s filling in gaps with a lot of speculation, really interesting new evidence, non-standard childhood behavior, starting a detective agency after you’re playing dungeons and dragons style wargames, .22 pistol, tailing suspicious looking characters all over Providence, an absurdly early age, Sarah Susan Lovecraft, conclusions, this book is so 2016/2017 with suppositions, hard to argue with facts, beyond precioucious, Mr Jim Moon’s rubbish detective agency, toddlers with automatic weapons, gun control, football, every male was given a badge that ranked them beta or delta, fuck you society!, ugly vs. striking, William Hope Hodgson, going with it and going against it, amateur journalism and reading pulp magazines, why my sympathy resonates with Lovecraft in his stories, he’s interested in school, Teddy Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, war was masculine, WWI was a mistake, pulled some strings, a strange sickly twilight individual, a walker and rambler vs. mad recluse, go for a walk and read books, social anxiety and mild depression, most of the people Jim knows, the subtitle, becoming H.P. Lovecraft, the stories themselves, August Derleth and Cthulhu plushies, Hypnos, Hypnos tattoos, very funny, a sarcastic take on the hipsters, THE answer, the secret history of why today is the way it is today, Gary Gygax comic book biography, Little Wars by H.G. Wells, war-gaming, the great grandfather of modern gaming, he’s not really a fantasist in most cases, Wells’ stamp, Doctor Who could not exist without The Time Machine, Lovecraft’s marriage to Sonia Greene, she bank rolled amateur journalism (their version of blogging or podcasting), The United Amateur, she comes off pretty well as a wife, he comes off pretty badly, a raconteur, carousing, a dynamic person, the teenage daughter, Lovecraft’s stepdaughter, some beautiful poetry, I’m after him, completely unemployable, he’s a rich man who has come down in the world, Lovecraft’s main attempt to make money was to revise other people’s writing, Marissa can make a living, Wayne can make a living, one ad in Weird Tales, rewriting, 100,000 letters, Ted Chiang, unwilling to compromise, manual labour, his job-seeking letter, 17th furniture was the peak of furniture design, no normal customer, mattresses mattresses mattresses, extraordinarily striking, he can’t grant his wife a divorce, his own worst enemy, he didn’t want a job, 14-18 hours a day, get yourself a Sonia, never ate in a restaurant, alone in their cave, not the normal thing, was H.P. Lovecraft a gay man?, his only woman kisser, time spent, some gay friends, his first love was books and writing, M.R. James, there might might be some very racy letters we’ll never see, asexuality, an old flame, we shouldn’t go there, he’s like most people, relationships are difficult, completely open-minded, he had the opportunity with R.H. Barlow, dwelling, everybody was in love with Lovecraft, it’s great to spend time with a brilliant mind, a 14 year old fan, Jesse’s students, interesting ideas, talking about art or sports, really normal, spending time with heroes, letters back and forth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, kind of a leap, getting together in physical space, we think he’s fascinating, trying to explain the fascination, a name to conjure with, a funky coffee house, a bowler hat and a tattoo with Lovecraft’s face, why Lovecraft plays a huge role as a totemic symbol, buying books with his name on the side, sex toys, Savage Sword of Conan, the Lovecraft influenced stories of Robert E. Howard, how did Mr Jim Moon discover Lovecraft, The Hound, Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, Trail Of Cthulhu, the role playing game, hitting thew jackpot, battered old paperbacks, Wayne’s dad was an SF reader, a stationery store’s upstairs, a metaphor of some kind, half-way up the ladder, Cool Air, it gave me chills, becoming obsessed with Lovecraft, what was in the used bookstore, do you think his writing style sets you up for that?, one of those writers, a bigger thrill everytime, like Shakespeare, into the flow, richer and richer, At the Mountains Of Madness, a gift card for Chapters, filed in the biography section, Scott Danielson, damn it!, the audiobook is missing the back-matter, Necronomicon fake-lore, good essays about Lovecraft by Angela Carter and Colin Wilson, the Chaosium Necronomicon, related short stories, The Adder by Fred Chapel, corrupting neighbouring books, why “In” in the title, forgotten perfectly, Lovecraft’s dad: ‘the chamber maid has insulted me and strange men are raping my wife’, sanitarium, he was “noisy”, the treatment was enemas every second day, damaged genitals, Poole’s theory, syphilis, Guy de Maupassant, in the background of Lovecraft’s psychology, bringing the sexual horror to the surface, high on morphine, not a friendly way to go, talking insensibly, high on opioids, that’s fucked up, drugs, who knows?, lose yourself in some good comic books because life is fucking horrible, the core of Lovecraft’s philosophy, Lovecraft thought about suicide, so polite, he hasn’t learned enough about geology yet, not the coward’s way out, Howard’s suicide, a lot more depressive, powerful and beautiful, The Thing On The Roof, getting right into the action, the requisite ending, in touch with that horror, why worry about getting married when you’re worried about how mortal you are, a lot of sympathy, marriage instead of suicide, what’s missing, what was Lovecraft doing all those years when he wasn’t writing?, astronomy, running clubs, becoming something, the eighth biography?, there’s something going on, he’s pointed to a lot of things, some much at odds with the myth of Lovecraft, he’s maladjusted, he’s anti-social, seven weeks of blackberry picking, Winnie the Pooh, more to the man, off the hip astrology, the intentional fallacy, a secret autobiography, what makes a weird tale, a whole other side, chit chatting with friends, walks and get-togethers, a different picture emerges, did you come here to praise him or bury him, a hatchet job, sour grapes, de Camp, he finds other people’s writings, that’s not great, get a handle on a whole life, it feels like we get to know him, a person we can know, incredibly like having a friendship, where did this mythology come from?, The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, people don’t like them, you have to do that, death is waiting for each and every one of us, existence is horrible, taking a step-back from you, reputation and mythology, absolutely an athiest, a pessimist, an atheistic existentialist, they don’t like it, an academic, a course on Lovecraft, what was H.P. Lovecraft’s philosophy?, material, atheism, cosmicism, racism, Cthulhu plushie racist, a quick bit of googling, it’s everywhere, something you have to get passed, tentacles, I like coffee, Freudian symbolism, who have you been dating?, chimera, the irony is bigger, I Am Providence, now he’s dirt, the fortune he was heir to and then lost, made it’s money from whaling, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, compromise, working at a gas station, humiliating, his worldview, bemoaning the decline of the aristocracy, pledged allegiance to King George, an unrepentant Tory, The Rats In The Walls, why we’re so interested in the man, writing true, making hay out of trends, the flavour of the week, no skin of his nose, rejected, he could suffer any indignity, a beautiful tragedy, it could have been a lot worse, he was so generous, the lord dispensing wealth, he was giving out what he wished he had recieved, mentoring, Robert Bloch, a life-line in the amateur press, fan letter, highfalutin poetry, the marketing came after by his fans, my point for Wayne, I could make Wayne so much money, he needs a Patreon, Audio Realms is out of business, the complete H.P. Lovecraft one book a month, some sort of barrier, it’s like you can’t lower yourself to that, he’s just lazy, you’re still alive, you’re killing me, At The Mountains Of Madness is a big job, that book is an expedition, Poole makes an argument that Prometheus is a retelling of At The Mountains Of Madness, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, a massive debt to Lovecraft, a link still unexplored, a thing podcast, thing it, them, they!, the mysterious pronouns in dark places.

In The Mountains Of MadnessTheExtraordinary Afterlife Of H.P. Lovecraft by W. Scott Poole

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