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The SFFaudio Podcast #756 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #756 – The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, read by Scott Miller (of The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (22 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
Imagination, July 1954, a month ahead, how the editor describes it, was this the end of mankind?, maybe, given the ending?, no, may be, how humanity is being defined, playing with posthumans, The Golden Man, sex-up our human ladies, A World Of Talent, early mid-50s, tamed, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, predict consumer behavior, sad, pathetic, a break, pre-cogs, Captive Market, make a buck, more pessimistic, what are the crawlers doing?, what are humans doing, living in suburbs, come down from Washington, farming land, driving trucks, a taxi driver, chickens, farming, radiation lab, Vanuatu or wherever they nuked, dark, homo regular, homo superior, homo slow, homo snail, very different, the least humanlike in shape, Big Noodle, essentially different, not like The X-Men, peel off their powers they still feel love, half of the juice of their stories, doesn’t work as a metaphor for racism, X-Men is about racism or gay people, we are people too, government’s involved, schools for them, the Philip K. Dick fan’s archive blog, the original title, Philip K. Dick wanted to call it “Foundling Home”, harder to see without that title, a throwback to the 19th century, orphans, radiation fears, Bikini, people getting radiated, Iraqi children getting birth defects from depleted uranium, what do parents do when their children are mutated?, somebody said something, go have a beer, he went to his typewriter, Doctor Bloodmoney, something real happened to Philip K. Dick,

if u start digging around in the storys PHILIP K. DICK actually rote, rather than the 1s his rep among novel readers &Hollywood present, u’ll find he rote storys nobody wants, ugly little tales with strange extensions &human faces, storys u’ll want hidden away or smashed & buried

nobody says we should all go read…, watch the movie with Nicholas Cage (who can talk), a weird guy in a government cage, weird roles, you would never guess, doesn’t work as an action film, your protagonist is a subject, The Pre-Persons, not a massive market for this kind of fiction, a low end market, the island that they put the kids on, back into the minds of one of these crawlers, inside that mind, the breeding center, strange foreshortened bodies with rigid limbs, the Gulf of Mexico is a big empty, the last two lines, somebody had mashed the throwback, a regular human baby, an abortion story, a communism story, they do cooperate, socialism, the next political stage of humanity, supplant capitalism, will resist with all its efforts, straight Marxist dialectic, Marxist theory, capitalism to communism, prevent the next one from being born, a physical embodiment, they build, a communal society, eventually the work would begin in earnest, what work?, supplanting the previous society, a Cold War story, smash the regular baby, what would the commissars do?, the revolutions in 1968s, as of Dick’s writing, when it comes springing up again, uncompromising terms, a baby capitalist, support Paul’s thesis, the Standard Oil station, Joe Jackson cracked its head with a two by four, Martians Come In Clouds, fearing the other, insect-like, Evan’s 2017 podcast on this story, undercooked, stinging humans, if you’re incredibly slow like in The Day Of The Triffids, running over with trucks, the illustration, an incredible images, flipper arms, a farmer beside his truck, the pasteboard box, through a white painted door, the grandmother, hiding, their own reservation, move all the people away from the radiation plant, they eat plants and leaves, they build nests, like cocoons, from caterpillar to something else, never got any schooling, abandoned, the older ones are darker in colour, institutionally, not from an educated point of view, build or built, toiled joyfully, the material, some juice that’s inside of him, a practice model, Roog, telling a story from a dog’s point of view, curled up inside, he oozed binder fluid, his edifice, almost dust free, drowsy, extended a part of himself, that part watched and listened warily, conscious that from a distance, nobody would guess what lay beneath, very good subtle writing, “taking care” of them, the euphemism, a mom, the large breasts she has, is she suckling this baby, grass in the pasteboard box, not humans but are humans, they do exactly what we do, an autistic son you might say, mothers would just kill their babies, mother animals reject their babies, only two teats, find some other mother with only one baby, cruel nature, infanticide, reflects back earlier on what the teenagers and the adults were doing, an infanticide story not an abortion story, who asked for that?, fallout from WWII’s end, Astounding and John W. Campbell, give me more mutant stories, stories that were variation, variations on Weinbaum stories, people took it literally, Slan is the prototypical example of that, an early Robert A. Heinlein novel, the one with guns [Beyond This Horizon], Lazarus Long’s ancestors, immortal mutants, how’d they get there?, Methuselah’s Children, eugenics, talky in the second half, Sixth Column, They, If This Goes On, Blowups Happen, so much in 1941, pseudonyms, Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, half of the issue would be Heinlein, are these Humanity+, part of progress, hold it a minute, these aren’t humans anymore, instinctual killers, neanderthals, a throwback, infanticide and eugenics, culling carp, sending kids to the pound, animal rights, how humans treat animals, Roog, from children’s pov, otherizing children, control naturals, duels and carrying firearms, armed society, polite society, give me a world where people are brandishing all the time, Sixth Column, fixups and edits, a slippery guy, for our story today, no editor would say…, a story about infanticide, more of a new wave thing, sparking me, he has a problem, infanticide exists and that shatters him, knows a kid, has a kid who has autism, all its hooves, fingers and toes, assessing intelligence, a calf will walk on the first day it is born, ultrasounds, its not infanticide anymore, slightly related, autism, reading Philip K. Dick, perhaps autism overrepresented, had to deal with it somehow, a lawsuit, this [class action] lawsuit, Tylenol, over the counter drugs, the flipper baby in the illustration, thalidomide, limits blood vessel growth, make limbs, huge international story, caterpillar man, no arms and no legs, an economic space, a concentration camp, experience of the mid-20th century, no child left behind, ready for the workforce, obsession with standards, diversity, homogenizing in public education, 80% chance of having Down syndrome, the justification is economic, not a moral choice your making, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, high rates of infanticide, about the little ice age, monasteries overrun, instinctual, for fun, almost like the Japanese, isolated them, creatures, not getting nursed, not getting dressed, organs in the back of them, pseudopodia, they look like babies, little bit of hair, “moist”, my god!, it’s like a human, are they supposed to be like this?!, essentially butterflies, the stingers, evolution into something else, milk, 20-21 minutes long, a response to Judith Merril’s Only A Mother, 1948, the replacement, no more normal kids being born, a few normal kids, physically deformed by mentally precocious, says the mother, I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, child locked in the basement, diary entries, doesn’t know what mud is, the cruel parents come down and beat the child, oozes green, can climb on the ceiling, Born Of Man And Woman, no social communist implication, working together in a community, not prioritizing one person’s success over another’s, a breeding chamber, are they mammals, are they bees?, humanizing things that are inhuman, showing that we are inhuman in the end, a human being killed by monsters, standard good Philip K. Dick, 1950, fears and worries, all her fingers and toes, pops out and you clean it up, smart, good at drawing, you gotta be a genius to read Philip K. Dick, the best Philip K. Dick, Time Out Of Joint, if she doesn’t like Galactic Pot Healer, kipple and the people left behind, is Harrison Ford an android, not only based on media properties, any duds?, his juvenile, mainstream novels, in the Hugo illuminati, working on the Heinlein thing, N.K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ayn Rand and fascist themes in Heinlein, talking people down on twitter, you want to fight him, that’s not the book, read the book and then you’ll know, Verhoeven turns the dials to 14, trying to solve a problem in the United States, in that book, what he’s arguing, non-war service, peace corp of shit like that, leaders whove never been in the army or navy, the guy with the eyepatch, Tulsi Gabbard, An American Utopia: Dual Power And The Universal Army by Fredric Jameson, universal conscription, use the military, how short WWII was, a 4 year job, put the pacifist in charge of weapons development, reckless wars and foreign adventures, the green transition, everyone has a job, everyone has healthcare, Starship Troopers it’s still a choice, his proposal and commentary, people challenge him, edited by Slavoj Žižek, that shitlib?, neolib?, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, upcoming things, Robert Silverberg’s Down To The Earth, the comic, still wrapped in plastic, inspired by Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Heinlein mines Kipling, Silverberg mines Conrad, Mike, libgen (Library Genesis), why you have to have a vpn sometimes, 2 CBRs, it still hates Paul, quite useful, people who want their book promoted this month, the Hugos There podcast, pretty good, David Brin, such a fuckin trainwreck, Seth Heasley, a philosophy podcast [The Partially Examined Life], this is a comedy show, still popular?, Kiln People, why Paul hates Amazon sometime, anything but David Brin, how broken this reality is, Startide Rising is a bad book, stories told from control panels, exhaust the idea superquick, David Weber, Paul needs to have an adblocker, goes to paperbacks, Existence by David Brin, Evan challenging Jesse in direct messages, when feeding animals and dog walking, Jesse is a bad Marxist, a Marxist book, Marx For Beginners, a comic book, not bad, does a pretty good job, what Evan really means, we need more material conditions, Evan wants everyone to be a historian, trends of history, context, greyer, more complex, like this story, a way of looking at it, not a communism story, what’s happening under a woman’s shirt when she’s breastfeeding: that’s communism, not supportive of irredentism, Evan’s middle name is Brinksman, self determination, Taiwan as a neoliberal hellscape, perfectly reasonable, Jimmy Dore thinks Taiwan is part of Taiwan, peace based on national self-determination, countries being occupied by the United States, Richard Nixon made peace, a third of Syria is under US occupation, South Korea, Germany is not be occupied by the United States, black and white, at what point was the Philippines no longer occupied by the United States, Iceland, Italy and France, is Canada occupied by the United States?, not really, NATO is the superstate, if you’ve got foreign troops in your country that have a base, Saudi Arabia, the people vs. the government, Columbia, if you don’t like it they change your government, that’s the problem, if there actual bases, Djibouti, China and the United States, you coup the government, that happened in Australia, probably hasn’t happened in Canada, weak indications, none of this applies to the case here, Taiwan was abandoned, in exchange for peace with China, Taiwan was a security council members, one country doesn’t want that, WWIII, war yes, Jesse is not being consistent, Donbass, Ukraine is a hot topic, if the Scots want independence, Scotland is more competent than England, UK was running the US for a while, you can’t say either countries are in charge, meta empires, military base, dead people from wars, caring about the veterans, farm people go off, Vancouver Island vs. New Caledonia, regional disputes, an intercontinental fight, it’d be bad if China forcibly took over Taiwan, who’s stoking that up, who we talking about, a southern NATO, basically Australian and New Zealand and Japan, the base in Okinawa, Japan has some interest in getting its feet wet, Afghanistan, the Japanese Empire still is, fucking ridiculous, the SDF, constitutionally mandated no war ever again military, waifus, get some vigour back in their loins, if they cross the ocean, we’ll Golden Slave next week, history!, David Milch’s proposal to HBO before he did Deadwood, a police drama in the early Roman Empire, fine I’ll do it in America, the most casual person, Caesar’s Column by Ignatius Donnelly, what a populist is, he was from Minnesota, 1890, not on LibriVox, the Atlantis guy, the Ancient Apocalypse guy [Graham Hancock], CBC Radio Ideas, things you should know if you’re an archaeologist: it’s potsherd not potshard, they’re related, Edgar Cayce, Madame Blavatsky, leads into Lovecraft, early science fiction America, the scholarship on the populist, The People, NO: A Brief History of Anti-Populism guy [Thomas Frank], What’s The Matter With Kansas, Lawrence Goodwyn’s Democratic Promise, silent generation, before the boomers, the new deal generation, lost his contracts, Listen Liberal, you let this happen, a lot of Democrats, Evan is not a Jimmy Dore fan, Russell Brand, Chapo Traphouse guys, ten minutes of knocking it out of the park, he’s absolutely right about the democrats turning, a rejection of the working class, it was open, not well advertized, no problem, Hillary’s gonna be our girl, the original Clinton, back to Carter, maybe 1968, Humphrey or McGovern, Clinton finished the job, Evan likes the thick bois, ignoramus who doesn’t read much and yet, nobody should make stupid mistakes, most people are not historians, withholding judgement, China content, when Nancy Pelosi went over there, unless you’re a little child who doesn’t understand how the world actually works, implying, the vast majority of Taiwanese, remove the China threat, independence, under the Taiwanese government, however Hong Kong’s working out, a second tier city, the housing crisis is worse that anywhere, Singapore, a hot war with nuclear armed countries, whoever starts it is bad, an international movement to recognize Taiwan as a country, Czech or Lithuania, to see what happens, cut relations, how many people wanna leave it, Australia, kinda fucked up, look at England, New Zealand, moving to escape other places, fucked up in different ways, London, live in a cubicle for 4000 pounds a month, more impressed with Paris, trying to make it look like a modern city, French immigrants to Canada, get away from this nuclear testing country, hippies, how you build cities, safe for cyclists, good subways, people had time to enjoy life, worked to death, no garbage cans on the street, the tragedy of the commons, it’s harder to build traditions than it is to make a stupid law, a culture that doesn’t do that, costing too much to clean it up, this excuse, neoliberal cutting the budget, win win, create jobs, China cares about making livable cities, done in authoritarian way, pride, nationalism, its ours, playing a lot of PUBG, matched with a rando, China number 1, China’s the best, a counter to America first, anytime now China’s going to surpass the United States, the population projections, this tictok thing, white women saying they’re Ritalin was being faked, I can’t get the house clean, get their Starbucks, early 2000s shows, The Sopranos, we should all go to therapy, it felt like a throwback, its role is to validate tony, narcissism, all this autism, Jesse gets weird people, this is not from a brain that works properly, a conversation with yourself, maybe it’s schizophrenia, I believe them when I read their tweets, Jesse has different kind of problems, chemicals in general, ingested, capitalism driving us to various disorders, when you start it when you’re 2, people in their 20s are zoomers, ensconced by this solipsistic existence, triggered [by Heinlein’s] They, Common Sense is the bleak one, knock the wifetooth out, the scientific revolution fails, five people escape with five wives each, don’t non-they them shame him [Joe-Jim], hims, the one time he [Heinlein] could have used at they and he didn’t, damn hims, damn they, animal wrangling, chicken crazy, an egg plague, eggs are cheap here [in Canada], Jesse petted three cats at all the feed stores.

The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick

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The SFFaudio Podcast #693 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlake

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #693 – Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlake – read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of novel (3 hours 25 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, and Trent Reynolds

Talked about on today’s show:
The Violent World Of Parker blog, Hard Case Crime, Call Me A Cab, a novella in Redbook, the RARA AVIS forums, Memory, many years later, when blogs died, Google murdered blogs, search blogs, authoritative sources, Redbook magazine, [1979], a new coffee maker and Hard Case Crime, sitting around reading Donald E. Westlake, the low point of his writing career, how many characters, Paul, Angie, Bob, the uncle and the aunt, and the guy he decks, and the base commander, and a cop, and the neighbourwoman, Dancing Aztec has 50-60 characters, 3 and a half ours, there to fill a function, write me an incest book, he writes what he knows, baffled, Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, funnier in concept than it is in execution, a cannibal book, hitting the checkpoints, the early lesbian and gay books, they have to kill themselves at the end, suicide murder, driven mad, smiling into the void, Lovecraftian, The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy, a serial necophile, more bedmates, this has no laughs, an interesting artifact of the industry, Paul Westlake, did you name your son after this character?, 1961, was Westlake Catholic?, a popular choice for Catholics, Angela, the water in which they swim, the uncle was James, not a lot of creativity, Westlake’s official website, A tender compassionate novel of incestuous love, Edwin West, first publication anywhere, a handsome old man smokin a cigarette, you’re in the drug store getting your paperbacks and condoms, it all began innocently enough, the cruel unfeeling world, marriage to a prostitute, the artifact, did he marry an Austrian, Evan’s Austrian accent for Ingrid, innocent but exciting, like people possessed, the horrible guilt came later, Monarch Books, Inc., who is the audience for this book, a lot more people than are willing to admit, redtube and pornhub, step-family, a porno joke, i need to do some larping, a taboo that’s only in humans?, do dogs have taboos?, look at bonobos and chimpanzees, Incest Among The Apes by Paul Weimer, monogamy, polygenous, Paul’s research, recessive traits vs. mutations, hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, frisson, evolutionary and cultural history, broadening the incest taboo, Cleopatra’s family and the royal family of Hawaii, Chinese incest, tribute princesses, the Manchus, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), “I’m pure blood”, of all the sleaze books, shoplifted quite a bit, checking on the listenership, he just has to do the job, some interesting things going on, it’s about the house, a property book, virginity issues, obsession with home ownership, an unlikeable character, physically abusive, a good depiction of his soul, a rebound relationship, feeling weird, over-reading, how boring her boyfriend Bob is, so boring, siblings are boring, leave the house and find some strange, find some nice Austrian lady, not very many positives, major life changes, the ring of the familiar, not a good edge, the emotional circumstances, a little too comfortable, how to construct a terrible book, the aunt who is comforting and the uncle is threatening, the funeral, isolated, tell Stella about my new boyfriend my brother, pick up sticks, Dain, three? sex scenes, we’re gonna be married soon, what makes a marriage formal, not consummated, doesn’t count, annulment, Maury Povich styles shows, Phil Donahue was classy, Morton Downey Junior, Jerry Springer, Povich is teaching, lesbian sex among co-eds in Greenwich Village by Dr. Lawrence Block, sandwiched, wife has sex with the family dog, Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio, Carnal Prayer Mat, as long as he ends up dead or ruined, don’t cheat on your loved ones, don’t pay a hooker with a personal cheque, our love cannot be denied!, a baby having two heads, two dudes who are gay for each other and they’re brothers, teratogenic incest baby, homosexual incest taboos, my husband is now my wife, why are the people doing this?, education + attention, this book exists, a market, the neighbours don’t know, The Lurking Fear by H.P. Lovecraft, The X-Files episode Home, the Peacock family, Weird Tales exoticism, peacock kings, real estate porn, your side plot is arguing over a deed, Western, lets talk to a lawyer, Westlake is really into insurance, The Risk Profession, a science fiction story about insurance, Somebody Owes Me Money, such a good book, murder mystery, the dad in that book, comparing different insurance plans, based on Westlake’s own life, The Green Eagle Score, To Catch A Thief (1955), insurance is the opposite of gambling, related to gambling, if you’re living in the states right now, Westlake’s upbringing, sitting around thinking about what things are like, the Red Cross stuff, a non-incest sex scene, easy ladies, engaging with the Red Cross, why is there this fight over the deed?, debts extinguishing with the death of the father, there’s no talk about a will, the office and lawyer stuff, an episode of The Saint written by Terry Nation, an allegory for Vietnam, the opposite of an allegory (a formula), returning the drugstore with a used incest book, he did a professional job, self-publishing on Amazon, the pornhub thing, the incest stepsister fantasy, available for anonymous download, Westlake is the sale, nobody at the time knew, technically crimes, incest and deed fraud, Subterranean Press, Honey Girls, Sin Hellcat by Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block, Folio Society, heresy, drink your champagne, lovingly see the typeface, you’re in the drugstore, you’ve got your sister at home, French ticklers, French packets [letters], WHAT MANNER OF LOVE?, “we could go away to some other city, Paul”, ravaged, empty terror, playing bit-parts in Summerstock, Campus Doll, Young And Innocent, the Grofield books, a half-handful of stories actually about insurance, the entire American welfare state is employer paid insurance schemes, writing at the peak of the welfare state, the insurance companies are a scam now, where Jesse lives, auto-insurance, the “socialist” government, less fighting in courts, mandatory insurance for drivers, nofault insurance, there’s no competition, the shitty health care we have (in British Columbia), everybody gets the same health insurance, when you’re pooling like that, getting your vaccine, “safe and effective”, there are effects, mnra vaccines, the hospital didn’t bankrupt Jesse, scam insurance, Westlake is thinking deeply (kind of his job), don’t sleep with your sister, we need an asshole character, pretty good book for a terrible book, the premise is what sells it, genres or tropes?, Angie doesn’t worried about getting pregnant very much, birth control is not mentioned, Paul opened the drawer of the nightstand and opened a Trojan, a weird reading experience, what a twit you are, other methods, there’s no vagina even mentioned, very tame, we’re never going to get as explicit as “she put in her diaphragm”, hang on bro, spermicidal jelly, The Naked Director, accidentally invents the facial, technically a birth control measure, boobs and nipples and curves, very tame, pornography inflation, women at the used bookstore with 30 romance novels, what is the appeal of these things, romance brain is super strong, Harlequin Romances, trying to sell romance novels, characters have sex but mostly incidents leading up to it, immature, exhausted what little there was, Evan’s narration, the cops were coming all the time, the garbage trucks came to get this book, process, Prince Snake Lady, Mr. Adam by Pat Frank, three chapters a day for a week, more of the German girlfriend, a much better book: if she had showed up again…, Angie has nothing, Bob is the best character, waste a bullet, make it a Lovecraftian story, just add a little mindswap, The Thing On The Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft, confluence of the ley lines, horror, The Green Eagle Score by Richard Stark, military policeman, Dortmunder beer, he’s not a dumb guy, this guy is thinking about things, drafted into the army, being in a socialist system (the army and the airforce), the universal army, Fredric Jameson, bureaucratization of problems, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt, 105 absolutely known, smut books, short stories, Mitch Tobin, I Know A Trick Or Two, the worst book, protecting ourselves from the accusations of liking , no heavy petting no penetration, a kissing book, Make Out Point, early Stephen King, Carrie, paradise by the dashboard lights, car culture, Italy, Taiwan, hourly rate hotels, a nap, you live with your parents even if you’re married, marginal phenomena, always step, the Japanese pron is straight sister stuff, the taboo is stronger in Japan, lesbian books, why you have hotel rates, your sister’s in the next room, a flourishing ebook market on Amazon for brother sister books, reading audiobook erotica, what people do for money, we don’t live in a communal society, the commercial aspect, the erotica business, drawing the line at incest, next week its cannibalism, other taboos, necrophilia, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell (age 15), The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy, antagonist vs. loving, Julia Morgan (Morgan Scorpion), is it Evan with his smoking is it Paul with his guilt, Paul Bishop, somewhere in San Fransisco…, Take The Money & Run, westerns, mysteries, Jack London seems to have invented frontier fiction, see life in the raw, claim jumping, western adjacent, Les Savage, Max Brand, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Outland (1981) is High Noon (1952) in space, Moon Zero Two (1969), hard SF, a spectacular failure, acoustic panels.

MONARCH BOOKS - Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlake (1961) - illustration by Harry Schaare

MONARCH BOOKS - Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlake (1961) BACK COVER5

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #688 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Niels Klim’s Journey Under The Ground by Ludvig Holberg

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #688 – Niels Klim’s Journey Under The Ground by Ludvig Holberg; read by Alan Winterrowd

This unabridged reading of the story (3 hours 45 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Connor Kaye.

Talked about on today’s show:
1741, Latin, 1845, underground journey, great Latin accent, difficult, funny stuff, interesting physics, satire, the midway point, old books, Edgar Allan Poe didn’t have electricity, nobody had a typewriter, a whole century before that, the farther back in time, upfront heavy lifting, explaining Elvis, a k-pop star from the Southern United States, girls go wild, in the tree society, not discussing the nature of God, he becomes a baron, Catholicism, anti-Catholic remarks, Denmark, the Holy Trinity, intellectual Catholics, upperclass twits and fashion, a criticism of Danish society, sick of religious debates in general, the book with the book, a book review of the book you’re reading in the book, a satire of travel literature, wild places, the unknown, to the center of the earth, The Goddess Of Atvatabar, how old this inner world concept, different physics, City Of Endless Night, in orbit around a sun at the center of the earth, another planet (a ball), he was treated like a comet, blown back through the same hole, the firmament, the opposite crust, a meta-argument, we see them as the heavens, balls all the way up, 2021 North America, and Australia, and Taiwan, causes eclipses on the world of the Firmament, their planet turns away from the sun, two hollow Earths, a donut within a donut, in 1740…, what Galileo and what Newton is doin, we haven’t seen out planet from a larger perspective, he big dumb object that is the planet earth, dumb in the sense of stupid, tigermen, monkeymen, treemen, the trees take his blood, they put branches on him to help him fit in, the Enlightenment, Cesare Beccaria, the prison reformer, capital punishment, criminal justice, people having different humours in their blood, making fun of it, utopian aspect, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, they star the same way, Mardi by Herman Melville, The Fall Of The House Of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, a Poe poem, the sentience of all vegetable things, colocation of stones, fungi, reduplication, they got up their own asses in terms of rationalism, travel narratives, duplicated, our books, the mental existence of the invalid,

Our books — the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid — were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium [[Inquisitorum]], by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and œgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic — the manual of a forgotten church — the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

a prequel to an underground world story, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket, these are bullshit books, alchemy is bullshit, what we do at the FDA now, peer review, a council of elders, Benjamin Franklin, the Royal Society, secret locked cages vs. done publicly, methinks thou do protest to much, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, sniffing out bullshit is hard for most people, why Poe has Usher so fucked up, he doesn’t leave his estate, through books, out the window, only testing books against other books, Sir John Manderville, Marco Polo, outlandish [bullshit], people with their face on their chest, Antonio Pigafetta, talking about Maoris, you’re a peasant, weird consulting, why is there so much in Science Fiction, exogamy, incest is what you do when you’re up your own ass, keeping money in the family, trying to breed traits, Roderick Usher once went to school, the Poe figure, dude, you went to seed quick, he doesn’t have the light of the sun, we need the stars to tell us where we are and what we are, other kinds of underground books, a really big thread in science fiction, the inner psychedelic journey, a nation of sensible tigers, the musical instrument people, the subtitle:

“being a
narrative of his wonderful descent to the subterranean
lands; together with an account of the
sensible animals and trees inhabiting the
PLANET NAZAR AND THE FIRMAMENT.”

you get what you paid for and the people who are like viola, play a viola at them, they play themselves, types of people you hang out with, musicians, the priests, special areas where menfolk were sent and grew fat and smooth, monasteries, cannibals,

“I have a kind of suspicion that the Europeans are cannibals; for they shut large flocks of healthful and strong persons in certain inclosures, called cloisters, for the purpose of making them fat and smooth. This object seldom fails, as these prisoners, free from all labor and care, have nothing to do but to enjoy themselves in these gardens of pleasure.

big protestant comment, not exactly Ents, don’t be hasty, let’s think this through, they have Entwives, we can go one further, a guy with a heart in his leg, a recurring theme, rape comedy, put on trial for rape, a Dutch hotel, Italy, sleep with the innkeeper’s wife, a comment on Italian hospitality, the Spanish sleep all day, he’s attacking everybody in Europe, fragment missing [Denmark], the crown scepter, he’s burning everybody, he criticized the German language, the main verb goes to the end, Mark Twain, good for jokes, Norwegian, The Bridge, why Pete Buttigieg can speak six languages, an empty title, the language of this land, the whole land is called holy, the continental augmenter of his country, invincible notwithstanding he is sometimes slain, worth reading the whole book just for this section, the famous Voltaire quote, a running joke, Charlemagne, one Mark Twain quote, people will quote stuff change all the worlds and attribute it to Ambrose Bierce, why wouldn’t it be Twain?, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, the monkeys with the wigs, the Australian and Canadian judicial system still does wigs, they gave him a fake tail in their descriptions of him, the book follows a pattern, he gets run out of town, a series of episodes, Candide by Voltaire, a monkey sequence, picaresques are for lower class heroes, Huckleberry Finn, rough and dishonest and appealing hero, a deacon who used to be an emperor, Jack Vance, low class, low brow characters, incidents, comedic, not a novel though novel lengthy, active vs. passive protagonists, it is active but doesn’t seem to be, just surviving, he changes the world, when a little kid writes copyright on a story for their mom, why would a little kid care about that, there is no international copyright, the printers are the ones who make money, a pension for life, he takes wives later, he draws the line at lioness wives, the men own the women but by social custom the women are run by the men, the woman runs the house so the man has to go the club, co-equal slaves to capitalism and there is no domestic sphere, the house sits empty all day long, so far before electricity, they’ve got gun, telescopes, printing, if you want to see something printed you have to go to a printer who writes it backwards on a piece of metal, why printed up in volumes, where the word “subscribe” comes from, comparing Donald E. Westlake to Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, you go to Bath, by the author of…, you put your name under, “preorders are love”, “likes are love”, write me a hate thing, tell me how I suck, the true measure of success, angry comments, you’re boring, bitcoin and supermodel asses, flashy mics and spinning gifs, the upload takes a long time, 500 episodes, if its easy do it, what Baron Ludvig Whatsiname, he would have been happy to have been abolished, meritocracy, distinct from Europe, earned the pension, Ben Shapiro talking to Joe Rogan, The Rise Of Meritocracy by Michael Dunlop Young, what Hillary Clinton thinks they’re in, we earned what we got, 1958, Obama looked down his nose at Biden, you’re not one of us, an aristocracy, parents wanting to get their kids into an ivy league school, it effects our reality, a student bragging about being a billionaire, Hannah Arendt, not technically a meritocracy, a youtuber, the different societies and cultures we’re seeing, plays, essays, poems, history, exploring how societies could work, the tree society, the women have too much equality, maybe we could improve the life of women, is he named after a real person?, in the fiction of the story he’s a real person, just graduated from seminary (college), the ending, the Wandering Jew , his crazy king getup, Jerusalem, Prester John, like a time traveler, the Flying Dutchman, wanting position, I’m a king here, John Smith with Pocahontas, how you got rich, people are interested in you, you are a weird celebrity, a nobody, given honors, revolutionize cultures, rise to power, feeds the fantasy, when you go to a foreign land and you eat a food, worried about Canadian culture (in opposition to the United States), food is a technology, a bowl of fruit, cheese is a technology, all technologies are copying, Newcomen’s steam engine, incest vs. exogamy, take you lumber to Scotland and they give you kilts, Pasta is not that interesting but getting silk out!, why India happens, movin that product, how people work with knowledge, you heard the news?, its built into us, its bullshit, not everything that you hear is real, reinforcing the bullshit detector, Star Trek, mad at the guy with the opposite tan, The Wheel Of Time, the travel genre, episodes, no overall massive goal, The Canterbury Tales, Jason And The Argonauts, Medea, an old genre, The Epic Of Gilgamesh, waiting for the complete volume, very interesting, some really funny bits, he acts the same way, Twain would have read a lot, what version did Poe read?, Poe in Scotland and England, why isn’t there a really good Edgar Allan Poe biography?, an alcoholic or not, he was a drinker, the Army of Northern Virginia, 3.5 hours, immensely more enjoyed, too airy fairy, above The Goddess of Atvatabar, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton, flying armies, the illustrations in both, The Mound by Zealia Bishop and H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Shaver, 1943, as true as Scientology, I Remember Lemuria, Amazing Stories, Ray Palmer, in the guise of fiction, “rock books”, like Joseph Smith, a branch of SF, like prions, mystical, good SF should challenge you, bad SF converts you into some whackjob who’s breathing though his nose to get more Vril power, fans are Slans, I have access to secret reality, these were popular because they had a quasi-true story thing about it, the letters column, the UFOs are Real, now that Space Force is a thing, ball lightning has been around long before space force, UFO means spaceship for most people, what an alien would say, I’m a lizard man from beneath the earth in Los Angeles, why are these guys arguing so much, rationalists are nice people but I wouldn’t let one marry my daughter, like a part of a cult, you’re either in a cult or you’ve just broken through the cult you’re in, what Michio Kaku purports to do, more elegant but still untestable, prayer, which would you rather have as a worshiper: a guy who follows all the edicts of your divinity and almost never asks you for favours or a guy who is always breaking your edicts but is constantly asking for favours?, understanding prayer, praying in my presence, god is apparently telepathic, praying in a language you don’t understand, prayer wheels, we know what we’re doing, why Robert E. Howard’s response to the Tibetan monks is The Black Seers Of Yimsha, unless its there to remind you of something, community, why is prayer intoned if God is telepathic?, your community can go insane, the First World War, go in the meatgrinder, don’t hang out with those ladies, go live into a cave, the sex strike in ancient Greece, the chicken feathers, we wont bang you if you don’t go into the meatgrinder, Lysistrata, war is a community activity, go to the trenches, you can make community with dead people Voltaire is my guy, he’s saying things that are in your head, “A friend is a second self” -Mark Twain, you want to hang out with Socrates, he’ll get you into trouble, have a symposium with, Alcibiades is hot, have a cat, The Midwich Cuckoos, Paul is going to Worldcon, triple vaccination, a super-spreader event, what screed has been nominated?, two dumb tweets in a row will get you unfollowed, down on the tweetcount, getting canceled, the secret is to only tweet about things that are universally appealing (cats), tweets about a slave to the COVID gods, masks are redundant in Taiwan, foreigners tend to be bootlickers, a nice hot take, Cold War on both sides, pro-China, a decent job and a hot date, they’re Neils Klim, there’s no Kentucky Colonels around here at all, Nebraska has a navy, so many chicken jokes, knighting people, giving them away like candy, the Congressional Medal Of Honor, as soon as you have a president putting a decoration around someone who isn’t one of the elite he now has power, having a beer with Obama, you’ve just given a sergeant power, real honorifics, Sergeant York, Audie Murphy, if they’re not on board….

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The SFFaudio Podcast #529 – READALONG: Typee by Herman Melville

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #529 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about Typee by Herman Melville

Talked about on today’s show:
a peep at Polynesian life, 1846, in which the protagonist is eaten, the island itself is non-fiction, Paul’s theory, Melville wanted to talk about the non-fictional aspects, how horrible western society was treating the islanders, this is not right, his most popular book (in Melville’s life), drawn from life, no one liked his imaginative stuff, the introduction, it proved to be popular on board ship, doth he protest too much?, the appendix, what the French are doing, what’s going to happen?, Evan’s first three podcasts episodes, his time amongst the cannibals, improved style (not improved microphone), writing scripts, 200 episodes, starting with the Lovecraftian element, the South Seas as a place where the Deep Ones made a deal, Dagon, biographies of Melville, lifestyle, wealthy families in decline, Edgar Allan Poe, a genetic East Coast elite white guys, a history of whaling, a literary genetic connection, Chapter 21, one day in returning…, Stonehenge, the druids, peculiar construction, so profound is the shade, he doesn’t believe the natives built these constructions, divine origins, an extinct and forgotten race, musing at the pyramid of Cheops, built upon massive stone foundations, the burying grounds, the race has deteriorated, habitual indolence, incontestable marks of great age, under the direction of Monu, dedicated to the immortal wooden idols, are there stone foundations all over the Marquesas?, this is a book about labour, Pierre and Confidence Man, Herman Melville Wants You To Quit Your Job, Bartleby, The Scrivener, one of the last places colonized by humans, a metaphor?, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the white Sphinx is a symbol for us, it baffles us, deep time, a post scarcity society, Hawaii, ravaged by colonialism, breadfruit, the mom, no resentment, profiting from previous generations, universal basic income, young people like tattoos!, colonial gaze, work is going on, not the work we’re used to, alien, salmon runs in the Pacific North West of North America, how much of this story is true?, only there for four weeks vs. four months, why do they want to keep Tomo?, endo vs. exo eating, cannibalism is real, the parallels between the beginning and the middle, Melville is so funny, a delight to read, the lack of food on the ship, poor Pedro the one rooster who ends up in a coffin under the Captain’s vest, all the French ships, taboo, Tomo and Toby, fleeing servitude, fleeing their tribe, deserters, why don’t they want them to flee?, no lack of food, pig and breadfruit and coconut, a long history of indigenous history taking in runaway slaves, John Jewitt, Maquinna, Nootka Sound, the Mourning Wars, Iroquois, you are now uncle Joe (who died), the same phenomenon, all the attention he gets, seen in relief, character list, bathe his body, a local celebrity, in a post scarcity environment, novelty and celebrity, social capital, I know Wayne June!, flee my tribe, all his fears of being cooked, Moby-Dick, Queequeg, selling his heads, essentially married, a delight, Fayaway, tattoos, do your face, in the tribe, becoming one of them, he can never go back, hilarious, a blank canvas, they’re not going to eat him, pantomime, the valley of the Hapars, they’ll eat you, they can’t be trusted, maybe that was Toby, an equivalent of Toby, endocannibals, preserving the spirit and the flesh, the cracker and the wine, she Jesse fear Paul, transubstantiation, concretized, perpetuated dogma, an innate sense of the value of humans, preserving your relationship to your loved ones, a beautiful thing, had the captain kept on his journey, the raft of the Medusa, what happened to the other guys?, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, the narrator ate one of the survivors of the shipwreck, cannibal sailors, Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land, a sacrament, Mike broth, journeys in the Pacific, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Chapter 26, the descriptive chapter titles, the marriage system on Nuku Hiva, popping the question, tedious courtships are unknown, a very tender age, a frolic of the affections, of graver years, as harmonious as so many turtles, supplementary husbands, no wife has less than two husbands, the matrimonial yoke, Marissa VU, 1970s, the roots of Science Fiction, a Silverberg story, a month-wife, what gender relations will be like when you get down the road from birth control, if you don’t like your husband…, a house-raising, this Garden of Eden, a fucking warship, thinking long and hard, as soon as the missionaries come, prostitution, a metaphor for transition, corrupted and twisted, the missionary gaze, the material reality of colonialism, the mosquitoes, flies, not utter heaven, it probably gets hot, a foil for European sexuality, Denis Diderot’s The Supplement For The Voyage Of Bougainville, French and Tahitan societies, women are not considered property, 1780s, those Enlightenment people, Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead, no property transfer, the slaving system, exogamy, no formal manumission, fix the guns, make the pop-guns, a novelty, an exciting item, the humans have great value in themselves, what’s really going on there, roving feet, greener grasses everywhere, Omoo, his name is Typee, taken to the court of a Polynesian princess, I’ll just be your dude, white people hanging out, behold the glorious result, Christian worship, Honolulu, draught horses, evangelizing beasts of burden, your money, you in your salons, Christianize the Pacific, not doing any good, you’re doing wrong here, the devestation of the pacific, what’s about to happen, six French warships, claim it for the Republic, Liberty, enslave and make an empire, middle 1840s, Empire’s on the books now, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas After the Civil War Paperback by Gerald Horne, the sea-otter fur trade, claims to have eaten Captain Cook’s big toe, white people parties, the flavour of Captain Cook’s toe, the full barrel, a great adventurer, what a shame, fantasize about writing, Magellan killed by the Filipinos and Cook killed by the Hawaiians, Captain George Vancouver, a feat of imposture, medieval relics, the effect of this book, the heads, The Red One by Jack London, the ancient astronauts idea, New Guinea, oral cultures, flexible stories, losing the knowledge of what was known, but gaining value, Bros. Grimm, ossified or concretized, creepy pastas, taking away the sharp edges, Tangled 2, Frozen 2, Moana (2016), for kids, if you’re interested in the frontier, how do the women get anywhere, an arbitrary tabu, [Jesse was thinking of a story entitled The Victim from Space by Robert Sheckley] Robert Silverberg’s Worlds of Wonder, Science Fiction 101, the narrator’s from Earth, giant paws, second pulse of migration, The Monsters by Robert Sheckley, Don’t Forget To Kill Your Wife by Robert Silverberg, a satire of conventions, Colony by Philip K. Dick, I Trusted The Rug Completely by Robert Silverberg, the Pacific is the vastness of space, an alien culture, as alien as anything we’ve ever seen (that’s sentient), first contact, Beyond Lies The Wub, Martian go-birds, the consequences of eating wub, rocket ships and technology, the ideas that are being explored, The Bones Of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan, the vastness of time and space, King Kamehameha, this nice tourist place, The Brady Bunch goes to Hawaii, a cursed idol, Uncle Tom’s Planet, one thing we know about science fiction writers (they were readers at one time), James P. Crow by Philip K. Dick, dealing with the past in their own stories, as close to Philip K. Dick as you can find, a pretty weird guy, how many stages the rocket has, just a guy who likes writing and likes ideas, not as obsessed with boobs, the sociology of what’s going on in a culture, Bring Me The Head Of Prince Charming, Roger Zelazny, Human Man’s Burden, The Native Problem, distant seas of talking, one of Evan’s favourite passages, climate change, China, Taiwan, not having a job is a humiliating state, make peace with consumption, a lot of moralism, anxiety about consumption, have fewer people, abolish the suburbs, Chapter 31, the girls again, dressing their fair and abundant locks, bathing five times a day, coconut oil, hair gel, the wages of living in this kind of world, not even a podcast even, or writing a book, or writing music, what will we do when we don’t have work?, the Puritan work-ethic, the Green New Deal, people need a job, people need meaningful work, a lot of nail salons, pet stores, pet waxing, no bookstores, a little puppy time, what kids want to do, some girls just don’t go outside, a local dude who wanted to look really fair, Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1957, restless blue-grey seas, a secret desire to be dead, a woman who loves truly and well, I’m through wasting my time, the sin against her father, the most precious thing a woman can give a man (a painful death), the ethos you’ve stepped into, long-pig (human meat), a Warner Bros. cartoon, the volcano god, Strange Eden by Philip K. Dick, Circe, transforming men into animals, why pigs?, the point of that story, other animals mentioned, lions, big cats, wolves, Brent is served meat and bread, is Circe turning men into pigs so she could eat them?, tastes like pork, Silverlock by John Myers Myers, what would have happened to Odysseus?, a fox, trickster, working out his own ideas, such a weird story, a fantasy with a science fiction setting, Piper In The Woods by Philip K. Dick, it could never work as an Electric Dreams episode, Evan is obsessed with work, maybe its a very Melville story, indigenous person, something very appealing about this, that colonial gaze, academic-y terms, Orientalism by Edward W. Said, witches, forming covens, In Thessaly by Clark Ashton Smith, The Golden Ass, transformation into animals, from the 2nd Century, inset tales, Scheherazade, Chaucer, story with the story, Borges, we’re lucky to live in such times, Evan needs to escape work, guaranteed basic income, too hung up on work, rich people bore Evan, Evan’s students resist it, sailor in a land full of Typees, in Marseilles the men are just sitting around drinking coffee all day, the labour movement, 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will, working three jobs, she’s not bragging, the fundamental disconnect, industry, economy, hard work, saving, the more moral meaning, these have to be abolished, a cultural revolution, back in China, picking on the Buddhist monks, post scarcity communism, the clock and the time discipline, knights fighting snails, The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford.

Typee by Herman Melville - from Cavalier, November 1956

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #495 – READALONG: News From Nowhere by William Morris

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #495 – Jesse, Bryan Alexander, and Evan Lampe talk about News From Nowhere by William Morris

Talked about on today’s show:
a socialist magazine, hardcover later that year, a response to something real, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy, historical interest, as a historian would, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, lefties read it, Frederick Jameson, Marxism, post-modernism, An American Utopia, universal conscription, the actual plan, the military budget goes up every year, segmented by geography and class, how the army works, a planned economy, Americans fetishize the flag and the army, only the poor serve, leftist history writing, the importance of fiction, Bellamy clubs, Nationalism, confusing to 21st century folks, a fierce reaction against, an anti-centralized anti-industrial, anti-factory, scythes, beautifully crafted scythes, odious labour is automated, a different attitude towards labour, Rossetti, the lesbian fruit poem, Goblin Market, Eleanor Marx, why am I arguing with the book, all the problems he’s not addressing, the audio drama adaptation, force power, not coal powered, salmon spawning in the Thames, it is a beautiful thing, about beauty, “An Epoch Of Rest”, arguing against motivation to work, he hasn’t defined work very successfully, Mack Reynolds, hardcore socialist, here’s a novel, Equality In The Year 2000, everybody has degrees, guaranteed universal income, no crappy work, a problem of robotics, a lack of work is the problem, how striking, the serious problem is a lack of work, lazy bums, not enough quality work, the drudgery jobs are eliminated somehow, primitive communism, no invasion, no starvation, real issues, revolutions in every country of Europe, way to naive, he’s writing a utopia, least religious, Dante Alighieri, Nowhere = Utopia, articles about police brutality, the eight hour workweek, dynamiters imprisoned, The Anarchist, this is news, economics and foreign relations, Karl Marx, utopians as bourgeois, the world we live in is not the only possible world, the Greek polis, the nation state, the prison, capitalism, this doesn’t make any sense, talking past each other, there are alternatives, the world we live in is not written in stone, 500 years, Ernst Bloch, Kim Stanley Robinson, making sense of Henry Tudor’s world, Pacific Edge is an almost feasible science fiction utopia, the political situation, small problems, eliminating currency, making manifest, can you really get rid of currency, “everyone is an artist”, David Graeber, debt, three chickens for your cow, debt societies, my son really loves your daughter, debt relations, swapping around debts, made up, fancy ledgers, the lecture in the museum, getting a cutter, load up on surplus goods, great looking wine, very happy dudes, the big projects, rebuilding this cathedral, rebuilding this road, Che Guevara with a scythe, a fantasy, having utopia in our own life, Lasqueti Island, the back-to-the-land movement, the real economy there, Bryan’s homestead in Vermont, snow from October to May, shedding every 20th century technology, rural internet, 1800s technology, the Amish and the Mennonites, scale, Karl Schroeder, Britain is depopulated, mass produced arts and crafts wallpaper, J.R.R. Tolkien, hand carved wood, working with stone, hand mowing the hay, boats haven’t changed, the emotional appeal of it, thinking about health, chemotherapy, we live well, how long we live, crib-death, surgery without anesthetics, kidney stones, the childbirth thing, primitivist?, easier for men than for women, liberatory technology (for women), epidurals, fantasy novels gendered female, fantasy as pleasant imaginations of medieval world, 14th and 15th century style, contemporary back-to-the-land literature, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Iain M. Bank’s culture novels, post-scarcity, assuming robotics, dishwashers and Roombas and autodocs, two ways to get to post-scarcity, post-Ice Age post-scarcity, Bellamy’s assumptions, the Chinese, until we’re all wealthy, Steen Hansen, I bet that guy was born wealthy, you can’t even conceive of this stuff, the trust-fund hippie, ramping up wealth inequality, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. , upper middle class enlightenment through international travel, a historical vibe, the Clinton Democratic shift to the right, growing the economic, neo-primitivist, satisfied with what they have, the turn of the seasons, the anticipations graded finely, the turn to handicrafts, making and smoking pipes, finding meaning, little cheaty things, the exercise of vital powers, enjoyment in production, making that bread, that bread smell, that bread taste, something real, that utopian problem, the resisters, the refusers, the classic problem of utopia, your real skills, a race car driver, he’s completely forgotten the tragedy of the commons, where’s the violence, where’s the threat of violence, so fantastic it’s less believable than princess fantasy, a deep, deep claim, reforming the material conditions of life, the new Soviet man, their art, anti-communists, you can’t defy human nature, socio-biology, social arrangements, creationists, Jordan Peterson, women are more free to be nurses, women wanna be more nurturing, dudes like hitting each other with sticks, men like writing these utopian science fiction novels, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, progressive and fascinating and a utopia, 25 years later, sparking a love and aesthetic, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, women serving food, William Guest, his age is 56, the romance angle, Dick and Clara, risque for 1890, to “be together”, still problems in utopia, relationship stuff, the whole marriage thing, Mardi by Herman Melville, Typee and Omoo, copies of European states, a Christian utopia, following the girl, a critique of utopia, Melville’s early novels, a failed job interview, Evan’s podcast, American frontierism, going off to Oklahoma, going off to Nevada, getting back to history, Suspicious Persons, content setting up a kingdom for themselves, an anti-work thesis, be with the cannibals, paradise, the fruits on the tree, work and traveling up the Thames, Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, maid’s knee, a model for all diseases, foolish doofuses, a series of ridiculous pastoral incidents without consequence, a madeira cake, told from an idle gentleman’s point of view, a huge smash, skulling, skulling all day, completely inappropriate, The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers, a German invasion of Britain, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, going to the water to make a utopia, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, living on breadfruit, making pineapples for foreign markets, it makes socialism seem like its fluffy-headed, one day the government will wither away, the ecological problem, an ecological lens, the green movement, cultural, all sorts of weird things are within human nature’s possibilities, ancient megaliths, some rich guy, what’s missing, notice how content everybody is, nobody wants to reach to the Moon, this is fascinating, I need six guys to help me build a super-collider in Kent, most people don’t need books, somebody has to clean the toilets, Hakim Bey, immanentism, the Bros. Grimm, the cultural creativity seems to have stopped, no new stories or songs, distressing Bryan, harder to imagine than a new tech, what we have now but streamlined, imagining the internet, human operators, Orson Scott Card got forums, the rich depth of Troll Culture, Locke is a troll, Poul Anderson, Olaf Stapledon, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, fashions, the genre, the Gernsback model, utopianism isn’t exactly science fiction, an epoch of rest vs. work houses, the reason Sherlock Holmes can do his job, the uniform of a coachman, a ridiculousness, winking the whole time, the coming out is anticipated, asymmetrical, great scenes, the Victorian version of the new Soviet man, no longer seen by people, dull and bleared, dirt and rags, much servility, what the Victorian era is doing to humans, a positive idea prompt, this poor bastard was made by his time, the black cloud overhead, servility, the class situation, Upstairs, Downstairs, a speech the butler gives, Downton Abbey has a changed ethos, a fantasy of a fantasy, “they are our betters”, there is great honor and beauty in doing your job well, taking pleasure in doing a job well, scrub it well, finding dignity in your own work, for two reasons, why the British didn’t have another revolution, Jesse is really on to something, understanding as a historian, a revolution is social relations, ranks, profession or blood, The Radicalization Of The American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, American slavery, “master” is replaced with “boss”, The Making Of The English Working Class by E.P. Thompson, “upper middle class”, Bryan is nodding and pumping his fist, republican virtues, a bipartisan love for the aristocracies, “we don’t do aristocratic politics in our family”, the least unequal period in British, Canadian, American and Australian history, more unequal, Downton Abbey is a celebration of aristocracy, Sex In The City, sukc down that fantasy and enjoy it, the Downton Abbey scenario, you’re the help, an expression of our acculturation, F. Scott Fitzgerald, WWI was fought as a love affair, the Trafalgar Square incident, Bill Hicks, how pathetic British crime is, fraying that love, the sociology of every nation (except for the USA), mutinies, broke France, broke Russia, broke Germany, that broke, the love affair is still there, “Boss”, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, a classic for the ages, the houses of parliament are used for storing manure, so savage in its takedown of all things American and medieval romanticism, Hank Morgan, why isn’t somebody wandering in, just get a stick and start hitting, no outlaws, no bandits, everybody is an artist, everybody be cool, universal basic income, the Manitoba Income Project, a decent response as to why would people work, cultural revolution, how the Romans saw the world, essential human characteristics, this book appreciates the idea that people find pleasure in being productive and helping one another, there’s a purpose to life outside a wage, a hard subject, the ultimate outcome is going to be close to E.M. Forsters’ The Machine Stops, starting a podcast after your oldest child moves out, changing how we raise children, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, every single hotel has two hour rates, long workdays, imaging having kids, women are freer, Ecan is a stay at home father, the fake complaint tweet, the TV was a CRT, Walmart, giving the kids to nannies, what money does, access to birth control, universal basic income will help, the government is really good at mailing cheques, orphan’s benefit, cheap college, money totally helps, that Mack Reynolds novel, you have to spend the money, Townsend, the economy is predictability, bitcoin, deformational effects, government is really good at regulating, doctors still make a living, even with wait times, no dental care system, Sam Harris, Jerry Yang, some idiot (Dave Rubin), you don’t need plumbing or building regulations, people cut corners, all the products are designed to be sold, “makeshifts”, pop (soda), the history of soda, who is responsible when you put the phosphoric acid into the pop, The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde, satire, remedying the evils they see in poverty, destroying the need for charity, super-rich having a charity ball for the poor, The Clinton Foundation, charity salves the soul, carrying for the unknown, I would be a freer person, people on the right, a state burden, a way to liberate people, the rise of pet stores, pet service stores, children are too expensive, “fur babies”, not a single pet in this book, there might be more birds of prey, The Revolt Of Islam by Percy Shelley, the most dangerous animal in England is a badger, bears in the mall, missing kitten, when you push down on one part of the society, such criticism, the economic cost, I really like the idea of craftsmanship, I love art, some lectures about how bad it was in the 19th century, a famine in France, France is just like this, the Iron Curtain, why NATO is still around today, dystopias are the inverse of that, everywhere’s the same, a global catastrophe, is The Road by Cormac McCarthy a dystopia?, addressing the truth of reality, violence isn’t going away, wouldn’t it be nice, how they get there, several chapters, one good thing about this book, immigration, easy to have a guest, what are you Greeks gonna do about it, sometimes that’s the point, a naive novel, “that’s what Hitler’s trying to do, yo”, rationalistic vs. empiricistic, eight hour work week, one idea, motivation to work outside of forced labour, keep scythin’, sowing.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #351 – READALONG: The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #351 – Jesse, Julie Davis, Seth, and Maissa talk about The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

Talked about on today’s show:
1953, Philip Marlowe, the long answer is no, The Big Sleep, “noir”, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder, Elliot Gould, abridgements, long or too long, spending time with the detective, forgetting about plot, Ray Porter, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, The Big Sleep, the book, the 1978 audio drama (90 minute), the Japanese 5-part miniseries, the recent BBC audio drama, the 1973 movie, overdosed on goodbyes, this is not a noir book, typically hardboiled is with detectives, noir is typically not with detectives, hardboiled vs. noir, Greek tragedy, a basic distinction, poisonville, a certain lack of hope, the detective with a heart of gold, Mickey Spillane, the anti-Philip Marlowe, being more cynical, more punchy, twisted, he’s hitty, Chandler’s best lines, how many times “goodbye” comes up, see you in a line-up, you never say goodbye to the cops, this is just quiet enough, cynicism, he cares too much, do you ever get paid?, $1,200 in the bank, he’s got a portrait of Madison, “I’m a romantic Bernie”, “the smear”, coffee, the little wake, a mystery, remember that pigskin suitcase?, pigskin gloves, the central mystery, who murdered Terry Lennox’s wife, Wade’s wife, his test, I wish I could have killed them both at once, Sylvia, he couldn’t perform?, a more successful version of herself, femme fatale, muddled by drugs, a Linda Loring, throwing the suitcase, that’s the suitcase, Sylvia’s face, is that something Eileen could do?, she’s like the worst thing in her life, when you go crazy mad, caught in a lie, what about the blood?, we infer she beat Sylvia to a bloody pulp, why would she lie?, she wants to make it seem more real, my husband shot her then beat her, emotion and drugs, the 1973 movie, the Elliot Gould movie, the Q&A with Elliot Gould, diverged, plot and tone, weird and good, lighthearted and noir, script by Leigh Brackett (of Empire Strikes Back), a return to Los Angeles, Eileen is still alive in the movie, a conspiracy, Mrs. Wade is in love with Terry Lennox (and married to him as well), she despises him (or is she lying?), Eileen blames Sylvia for everything, the cool thing about this book is that it is very open, experiencing the mystery (rather than solving), just supposition, the mailbox, its almost as if the Mexican Terry Lennox doesn’t know what’s going on, a rotter from the beginning, what we read a lot of these books for, the mystery as the vehicle, Derek Jacobi reading The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, there’s a humanity to this, making different choices when in custody, Marlowe saw something in Lennox worth redeeming, if Bryan Alexander were here…, because it is a war book, huuuuhhhn, 1920s book by authors who survived WWI, which regiment was Lennox in?, the SAS in 1942 in Norway, taxi drivers and cops are vets, Chandler’s Marlowe is a vet, using the terminology, the one thing that is left unsaid, why is Terry Lennox acting this way?, his wife, he’s a wastrel, how the other characters react to Terry Lennox, the criminal in Los Vegas, Randy Starr, Manny Menendez, there’s no need, why didn’t you call sooner?, the reason he’s got those scars on his face, against my better judgement, picking up a wounded warrior, he does that for all kinds of people, Double Indemnity wasn’t fueled by war, where does that go into Some Like It Hot?, Terry Lennox is a bookend, pointing fingers and taking names, drugs and partying and corrupt police, why the analogy doesn’t work, the guy who’s not fighting during the war, James M. Cain, about rich selfish people who are wasting their lives, the plot, throwing them into relief, the contrast, seeing Terry Lennox lying on the road, what Terry Lennox has those scars for, the Japanese version, everything is inverted, he can’t be an American soldier, the enemy is the Russians, a different spin on it, dealing in the results of war, post-traumatic stress syndrome, over-the-top, over-saturated lighting, a lot of coffee, a comic book adaptation, answering unanswered questions, sympathetic, Candy is Julie’s favorite character, the war is central to the Japanese adaptation, reading it now, the first four or five Robert B. Parker Spencer books, The Godwulf Manuscript, a war novel, The Guns Of Navarone, The Lord Of The Rings as a way of dealing with WWI, talking about other things, A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, what it was like to be in the Ardennes in the winter of 1944, it was like being homeless, hoping the supply train is going to come through, why is he getting drunk all the time, hidden secrets and identities, there’s something about Marlowe, a survivor of the war of life, the drunk tank, the POW camp, Chandler thinks this is his best book, taxi drivers reading escapist science fiction magazines, if I was in that kind of condition…, we’re all in the same army, just want to make things right, to try and set some sort of reset, fix things, once in a long while you get dead, a load of grief and a bit of money, stopping the entropy, why can he not have a normal life any more, it’d be reductionist to say it was about war, post-war USA had a hell of a lot of drinking, half gin and half Rose’s lime juice will still get you soused (a gimlet), autobiographical (Chandler’s wife was dying while he was writing The Long Goodbye), author talks, Chandler is showing us a complete look at detective work and all that it takes, they’ve all got a scam going, sold his soul to the company store, his journalist friend, working the problem, Idle Valley (where the rich people live), Marlowe as an ex-drunk, what the drunk-tank is like, the life of an alcoholic, Chandler had drinking issues, a recovering alcoholic, more coffee than gin, the 1973 movie scene, “let’s get drunk”, trying to find the truth, the F. Scott Fitzgerald connection, The Last Tycoon, more idle rich, Wade writes historical romance (instead of detective fiction), translating to Japanese culture, hentai, taking off the layers of dresses (a woman who has never taking a bath), hanging out with Wade, self-destructive not wife-destructive, he didn’t kill that woman, an incompetent femme fatale, might-have been sort of a hooker, Wade brought her out of the gutter, their Mexico is Taiwan, a period piece, he was driving an American car (left hand drive), they must have had fedoras and gimlets, a jazz version of, “it’s okay with me”, hash-brownies, Arnold Schwarzenegger with a mustache, it WASN’T okay with him, justice, Eileen Wade got to sit with it, dispensing justice, somehow it is the same story, in cahoots with the gangsters, political gain, why did Marlowe abandon Terry at the very end, re-question, red-herrings (or not red-herrings), re-framing everything, that’s how we actually live (unlike a Scooby Doo ending), I would never have come out had you not smoked me out, he puts stuff out there, I was in the commandos, you’re not hear anymore, as elegant as a fifty-dollar whore, prove to me you’re not that way, “that was the last I saw of him”, he had a chance to become better, wanting to see the truth done and the innocent people taken care of, detectives poke at things, there’s nothing inside, two empty people, one filling with alcohol one filling with drugs, both ruined by the war (or whatever), the perpetual human problem, what’s the hole that’s left inside, ya ya ya ya ya ya, full of really good quotes, Chapters (Canadian book store), this book is so much fun, [we quote from the book], one for Julie, one for Seth, a briefcase one, at the bar it was always five in the afternoon, Terry Lennox became a Mexican, a Mexican syncopation to his speech, how refreshingly unconcerned about political correctness, when a Mexican…, sooo racist, sooo genderist, it’s of the the time, the fact that he’s got a knife, a little more granular sense that he’s a little person, there’s no fake characters, heart of gold vs. cynicism, how far am I gonna go with this?, the way they dealt with each other (in the Japanese adaption), you would clean the war off me, a relationship of debt, subtitles with footnotes, the second time through, little bits of description, a bird chirping, the car was gone, a red oleander bush, a baby mockingbird, a single harsh warning chirp, birds have to learn too, priming you for all sorts of things, it’s rich, it works on more than one level, so much of their time, how much is a sandwich, drinking their night away, they didn’t think about it the way they do now, the movie Airplane!, he has a drinking problem, flashbacks to the war (WWII), out of context it’s hilarious, it still sort of true, we’re always going to have the cultural baggage, none of Jesse’s students know who the Flintstones are, Flitstone vitamins is an echo of The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, reading a book like this is kind of like time travel, tiny houses with orange trees in Los Angeles, L.A. Noire (PC game), the game reconstructs a huge part of Los Angeles, the Grand Theft Auto games, Chinatown, The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, playing the game is kind of like revisiting that period, oh hey I’m in the middle of an investigation here, games vs. books, Robert B. Parker co-wrote the final Marlowe book Poodle Springs, Ray Porter’s narration, female voices, the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry, the Mexican characters, Elliot Gould’s narrations, nicely abridged, he’s a weird speaker, a Robert Altman movie, what is lost was all those Chandlerisms, a collapse of characters, well what have you got now, the movie starts with a cat, Michael Connelly, there’s something cool happening in that 3 o’clock in the morning, the cat abandons him, the cat is Sylvia Lennox, you can’t lie to a cat, they demand truth, the sunrises and the sunsets in the Japanese version, the colour of a sunset and a Japanese print, the things that they take, two BBC radio adaptations, a LIVE TV movie in 1954 (now lost).

Pocket Books - The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler - Illustrated by Tom Dunn

Posted by Jesse Willis