Ted Chiang – Page 4

The SFFaudio Podcast #542 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exhalation: Stories: What’s Expected Of Us by Ted Chiang

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #542 – What’s Expected Of Us from Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang; This is an unabridged reading of What’s Expected Of Us (6 minutes) followed by a discussion of the Penguin Random House Audio audiobook of Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang.

participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Wayne June, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
his second collection, 17 years to come out, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, squint hard, a lot of them have a focus on children, he had some kids?, a theme, teaching and growing, parenting, Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom, a science fiction story with mimetic fiction problems, Dacy’s Patent Automatic Nanny, childrearing, not the major theme, background thought processes, fate and destiny, an abiding theme, care and caring, finding truths closer to home, The Great Silence, dissecting one’s own brain, straight up science fiction, Kim Stanley Robinson, you fools, you’re wasting your life, Paul could rant, set on spaceships, making sense of reality, a test subject for another star, they’re all standouts, its not our universe, a creationist universe, a dread discovery, the center of the universe is elsewhere, Earth as a prototype for someone else, an epistolary manner, a crisis of faith, Poul Anderson, a mixed relationship, life after death, finding a way to be comfortable with that fact, approaching the subject of entropy, the universe is winding down, nobody is going to live forever, comforting ideas, all just whistling past the graveyard, a positive conclusion about it, how do you look into the abyss and come away with a happy attitude, be happy on the way down, Oomphalos, I’m in charge now, now she has free will, he explores free will from every direction, the audiobook from Tantor, it took a long time for audiobooks to become the dominant medium for people who actually read, I don’t get many ideas, most reviewers on YouTube: booktubers?, a whole universe of people, people who read books are really weird, every week you wanna be reading a new book? what a weirdo, the New York Times bestseller, books not designed to be read, overwritten, as any right thinking person would, these should be longer, very presumptuous, I want more of this, throwing down idea much bigger than the package he places them in, Wayne liked the shortest stories best, educated super-intelligent, deep thought, rigorous self-examination, tedious, on and on and on, 48 minutes, The Lifecycle Of Software Of Objects, concentrated science fiction, two drops in a cup of water, what it means, navel, center, a role playing anecdote, the enemy is the they (the center of the universe), we’re the center of the universe, The Middle Kingdom, Middle Sea, everywhere is the center, everybody’s stupid because their vision is so limited, a young earth, a parallel in our own history, reason for belief, mummies with no navels, obviously not created, his guiding philosophy, if there was a miracle, its on rails, preodomites, other people, The Truth Of Fact The Truth Of Feeling, deeply profound, a Black Mirror episode, some colonial guy getting colonized, writing and reading, auto text generator, no periods, Roman monuments used dots not spaces, pre-modern Chinese, getting it from context, cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, right in Jesse’s zone, Bros. Grimm concertizing, once in book form, Jesse doesn’t really take notes, one of the things going on, going back to an oral culture, Socrates, cost effective, the Romans were into copying and photo-copying each other’s works, questioning the nature of truth and reality, really cool, what truth is, Scott and Jesse conversations on truth, people complaining about truth, he’s more truthful about his lying, politician lying, not a wise man, wiser than some of the fools that have been so smart in the past, he was not the same, name recognition, you know exactly what his motivation is, truth is not one thing, your own memory of what reality was, science as being replicable, that whole diatribe, truth is that what is, there is an objective truth, we hope, touch the Eiffel Tower, a subjective conclusion, the objective truth, defining truth, relativistic, its subtle, tirade harangue fulmination, discursive, who designed it?, maybe he stole that plan, the more you don’t examine and are unable to reexamine stuff…, religious truth, truths which motivation action, William James, pragmatism, because it was false, smoke sacrifice to the gods was meaningless, intersecting with other science fiction stories, Living Space by Isaac Asimov, king of your own planet, a real estate story, jack hammering off the coast of Labrador, a Nazi universe, Genghis Khan, mythological pseudo-historical figure, the universe does and doesn’t care about you, making a connection with science, those most interested in religion were scientists, Isaac Newton, the original Bible Code person, the impact might have been diluted, these people don’t die, there is no biology, this culture built up around air-stations, eating as a cultural event, if you get this you can tell the story, The Nine Billion Names Of God and The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, sacrificed, hits Paul in the feels, the three narcissistic wounds, Sigmund Freud, the Earth is not the center, Darwin and evolution, that the ego thinks it is free is an illusion, strong with archaeological proofs, freedom, no final answer, interesting concepts, Olaf Stapledon, a whole book from one paragraph of Starmaker, Jorge Luis Borges, The Library Of Babel, standing room for sleeping, why this illusory duplication, this is not our world, there’s no food, they’re more like robots in a certain sense, all the argon is coming to them from something beneath them, who invented the robots?, a blank slate, the robot equivalent, an analogy of the heat death of the universe, “we existed we were real”, a self contained universe, a navel gazing story, working the same theme, Jesus in South America (the God of Dreams) [The Circular Ruins], teaching the A.I.s consciousness, self-dissecting, a good example that doesn’t exist in the same way as ours does, the transference between universes, the prism, Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom, Until The End Of The World (1999), replaying your dreams, so much about them, the perfect obsessive movie for you, gazing into who you are, the machine allows you to navel gaze, fomo = fear of missing out, the grass is greener, a simple idea, fragmenting kaleidoscopic versions of reality, only a few months old and it was going up in value, diminishing returns, amazing sparky thoughts, pirated songs, I’d make so much money, information is the only thing passed between universes, copyrighted specifically for you, the same wound, possible yous, not being paralyzed, why not?, one of me is going to do it, destroys your ordinary criteria for action, a high dose of neg-entropy, the school shooters, what effect would it have, Jesse derives solace from being (sort of) a determinist, science fiction about the difficulty of weather prediction, are there more murders now?, outliers, fads, more of the same, All The Myriad Ways by Larry Niven, you might lose your will to do things, What’s Expected Of Us, whichever universe you’re in, Vanessa, an unstable person, Counterpart, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, as Evan pointed out on his podcast, the universe is very small, seeing what’s going on outside, they’re all blending together, he thought he had done so much work, that’s much to harsh, words can sometimes resonate very deeply, the non-simple truth, a reality we are distantly connected to, poor connections, emergent things, to know what truth is (is tough), a longer meditation, the longest thing he’s ever written, either these people are wasting their lives or we’re all wasting our lives, where’s the truth there WAYNE?, to leap into agnosticism, relate to our interpretation of reality, we can only do what we can do, the motif of harmful sensation, The Imp Of The Perverse, physical or mental damage you can suffer, explicitly shoutsout to H.P. Lovecraft, akinetic mutism, won’t or can’t speak or won’t or can’t move, the motif of harmful sensation, a truly convincing argument that life is pointless might qualify, it doesn’t matter, a thread running through (or more than one), Ted Chiang has got a brain, the Lovecraftian horror, like a cognitive plague, a thought that explores the thinker, a Godel sentence, I try to act as if or rather action happens, pretend you have free will, believing the lie is the only way to avoid this waking coma, civilization relies on self-deception (perhaps it always has), The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, living it, this universe might have slipped into equilibrium with nothing more than a quiet hiss, that in itself is beauty, in the next bottle over, the Complete Works of Shakespeare except it’s “Shmamlet”, the meaning is fake, Paul’s fear, robot descendants,

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

not a horror story but a science fiction truth, truths always in refinement, David Hume, past behavior, Robert Wright’s interview with Ted Chiang, The Story Of Your Life, a silly seeming story, Arrival, are you going to roll up into a little ball or are you going to affirm it?, the pharmacon, poison and medicine, make you a paralyzed mute or a creative, it takes all that time or that care to make that stuff literary, Wayne’s in a little ball, Wayne’s gonna complain, some stuff’s going to happen, get some jokes in there, WTF, we’re all gonna be specks in a layer of basalt, Tony C. Smith’s StarShipSofa, a Ted Chiang fan forever now, four stories, nested stories, Arabian Nights, Scheherazade, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Garden Of Forking Paths, you can read it forever, a story that’s circular, in the exact middle you have a point around which everything swirls, the knowledge for where the treasure under the tree came from, super symmetrical, so wonderful, a time travel story in which there’s no technological difference, no traditional time travel tropes, there’s no predicting eclipse, he steals from himself, he predicts the albino baby and gets out of prison, The Diamond Necklace or The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, there’s the pit of despair, the story is the treasure, we as the prince get the benefit, why the title is Exhalation: Stories, The Great Silence, John Paul Sartre with possible worlds, Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny, whatever works is true, the suppression of this technology because of the ruling class, nowhere for that to go, a remaking of humanity, thinking about childrearing while childrearing, mimetic fiction is all about divorces, my experience with my marriage, different parents have different levels of interest in their own child’s rearing, would have benefited the working class, the washing machine is liberatory, television as the babysitter, smartphones, is that wrong, a typical Ted Chiang thing, an actual syndrome: psychosocial dwarfism, growth hormones stop operating, emotional malnutrition, not an ideal human state, really bougie, homeschooling, unschooling, the class dimension, a survival strategy, a metaphor for public schooling, The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick, Nanny by Philip K. Dick, the planned obsolescence angle, aloof parents, more attached to the nanny than to the parents, gladiatorial nannies, what if they trigger while raising the kids, if you follow police state logic, hands are dangerous weapons, tape their mouths up, and kill everybody (to be safe), the rational childcare device, a more cutesy vignette

reading, or being read, Ted Chiang stories, is like quaffing pure liters of undiluted SCIENCE FICTION from the fount in which it was first forged. And I tell you, without hyperbole, that Science Fiction absolutely cannot die as long as TED CHIANG lives and writes it.

asking and posing the big questions, natural science, parallel universes, asking questions, collecting and systematizing, that guy we didn’t like, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, “proving things”, weapons of mass destruction, 17 intelligence agencies, how can we falsify this?, holy shit he was right!, thought experiments, thinking them through completely, exploring a philosophical point, you can’t do it with mimetic fiction, what happens if…, that’s what they all are, the author afterwords offer insight, that I’m taking my head apart scene, a reverse infodump, we can’t understand ourselves, arguments like proverbs (suck), limiting understanding, refusing that limit, there’s no Godellian self-impossibility, what Dick does, almost like a drug metaphor, the thought’s he’s having and the thoughts he’s expressing, if you want to get into a big fight, tell me my hand is not my hand, memory, Hal, the difference, Ted Chiang doesn’t have this paranoia, adjacent to technology, the guy measuring the ether, how do we know what we know, the art installation for The Great Silence, Alex the talking parrot, very emotional, their beak is kind of their hand, emotional realities, those Alex videos, a whole other mind we have access to through regular English, these humans are looking for intelligence in the universe, the search for terrestrial intelligence, pretty cool, kinda heartbreaking, the whole Alex thing, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams, Arecibo, it hears the voice of creation, the lasting breath, spirit as the breath of God, the breath is not me, he’s having it both ways, these copper plates, audio versus text, in another five years, Wayne would personally recommend the book and the audiobook, here’s where I got the idea, at the end of every story, as a collection, this book we can hand off to people, I feel stupid when I’m reading stupid, reading this makes me feel like I’m the genius that I am, I’m sophisticated, I’m so stupid, not having brilliant ideas all day long, a guy practicing his words for his sermon, thinking on aloud, thinking on paper, writing therapy, cast them out of you, people are made of stories.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #521 – READALONG: The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #521 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Talked about on today’s show:
David Stifel, more explicitly racist, some language, chinks, a dago with affection, a class thing, an interesting book to look at, its about class, Japanese headhunters, isolates, out of time, they might as well be on Mars, historical context, yellow peril, American aristocracy, Burroughs is relaxing and enjoyable, licensees, defenders of the estate, a massively loyal older fanbase, old websites absolutely dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, he threw all of this together, it goes down so easily, so fun, not everything has to be deep and profound, very comparable to Herman Melville’s Typee, a travelogue, protagonists on headhunting islands, the differences couldn’t be larger, the whole appendix, Tarzan, the Mars novels, action beats, adventure, man against the world, surprised by the ending of The Mucker, hooligan brawler, alcoholism, he walks away, easy to miss, the pattern repeats itself, Lord Greystoke, civilized, A Princess Of Mars, dating a princess, marrying a princess, a lowest class Chicago hoodlum cannot ascend, aristocracy is the word, reformed by this aristocratic figures, Derrier vs. Theriere, models for our anti-hero (hero), acting heroic, an interesting attack, Billy Byrne’s upbringing, trying to make a sociological point, taking it seriously, Jack London, similar characters, working class vulgar, class switching, a researcher in the slums of California, bougie academic jobs, Martin Eden, learning how to speak from the middle class, The Iron Heel, this reformist agenda, a working class story, the underclass, Studs Lonigan trilogy, ennui about capitalism, a descent, awakened into his heroic character, underplaying the role of Theriere, Mallory, Barbara, which classes are represented, the captain of the ship, The Call Of The Wild, the story arc of Buck, a pampered king, a slave, free in a new way, the man with the red sweater, the power of man over beast, physical abuse from his mom, no friends only heroes, thieves and murderers, very Burroughsian in its romance, island paradise, an island within an island, what was Burroughs thinking?, love for dogs and girls and falling in love, very romantic, swords and sandals and radium pistols, the romance of friendship, getting emotional, they start crying, brother and mother animals, in this process of transformation, not even the main character, his epithet, Billy was a mucker, a term that survives, a term that was in use, covered in shit, to muck out stalls, low-class person, that dirt doesn’t rub off, he fixes his grammar, improving oneself by improving one’s grammar, act like the class you’re moving into, Google N-Gram, those guys in the muck, the trauma, the most dignified sons of our nation, indiscriminate, shells and gas, the sudden reform, abstaining from alcohol, reflective of the minds of people in 1913, the progressive era, urban problems, prostitutes and drunkard, sewer socialism, clean up the city, the temperance movement, rural alcoholism is less conspicuous, in reading about drugs, the history of drugs, misidentifying the power of a drug in its ascendancy, smoking cigarettes, clamped down, personal virtue, western Canada, vaping is taking off, vaping in the bathroom, the smoking pit, they were the bad ones, the same drug, we don’t have our defenses up, a nice artifact, gangs in the street, his kindergarten, a metaphor, a dented bucket of beer, a bunch of thugs, a certain class of people, why was Theriere disgraced?, class-based, cheap and social, the health benefits, working class leisure, the work ethic, a lot of paranoia about drugs is about people not working, marijuana, John Barleycorn, drinking at a young age, part of working life, you couldn’t function with drink, getting you past the pain, no empathy, empathy for the manliness, John Carter is insane, psychosis and confabulation, Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane, Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein, hybrid samurai cannibals, I was promised cannibals, Popeye: The Sailor Man, I am what I am and that’s all that I am, break out the spinach, a professor, the science of boxing, Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson, a low class guy with drug addicted parent, using anger and hate to make him a monster, Japanese endogamy, a lost colony of Japan, medieval age samurais, samurai headhunters?, The Land That Time Forgot, inbreeding, the late Ashikaga daimyo, a lawless frontier, uninhabited islands, the image, Madame Butterfly, all those islands, something interesting there, The Philippines, cultural relics, the War in the Pacific, how it is science fictional, most explicitly SFF related, Tarzan is about the blank slate, natural experiments, wild children, getting on a ship and seeing what’s there, the Pacific is spaceship and space and island worlds allowing you to have adventures, Planet Stories, F&SF, Galaxy magazine, transferable from the ocean to space, Ted Chiang, the chemistry and biology, one little weird tick, the monsters, the father and the son, all for the sake of allowing Billy to have his adventures, who is the intended audience, selling it to a pulp, some people appreciated it, I wanna make some money, selling to the workman, this cool looking train heist, by the guy who wrote Tarzan, Burroughs is trying to find out what sells, his version of a Yellow Peril story, San Fransisco, tongs, the ship action, learning to be a sailor, Robert E. Howard’s Sailor Steve Costigan, muscled doofuses with good hearts, the sailor tough-guy, the way Popeye talks, a strange guy with a tattoo, the middle classes have tattoos, sailors made this a thing, weird tattoos, its a prison thing, sailors looking at each other’s tattoos, anchor tattoo, the anime character that they like, the heart of the Yellow Peril anxiety, the Yellow Peril is a fake threat that’s fun to think about, they’re out-breeding us and they’re smarter than us, laws against intermarriage, medieval military savagery, relapsed into primitive ignorance, racial hierarchy, white yellow brown black and red, Chinese eugenicists, degenerated by intermingling, slavs, miscegenation, he fails to interbreed with the upper-class, in the sequel, bandits in Mexico, The Oakdale Affair, Two Dooms by Cyril M. Kornbluth, wrong about everything, a Hopi Indian, full of Asians, yellow peril-y, this is really stupid, taking our land and our women, save American from these threats, fun storytelling, so fake as to be not worthy of attention, the Fu-Manchu stories, The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu, Hong Kong, an anti-colonialist narrative, Nyland and Petrie are boring, the one with the principles, so devilishly ambitious and smart, as a genre, red scare books, yellow peril is both up and down, interest in the East, Judge Dee, Robert van Gulik, Red Scare, Red Dawn (1984), we need breeding programs!, they tried to remake -> Red Dawn (2012), Cubans running around in Africa, we would like to be so organized, the brotherhood of man, no classes, an Australian red-peril yellow-peril movie, Tomorrow, When The War Began (2010), taboo, the white ghost, coming from a place of ignorance, don’t use that word, you have to use the right word for it, its not the actions, change the terminology, too ignorant, that top down acceptance, I’ll live on Park Avenue and he’ll live across the street, a fantasy world in a hollow in the woods, it becomes important to him, as real as anything else in this book, an unreal inside of an unreal, jockeying for whose going to marry this girl, a prize to be won, Burroughs makes active women, her knowing Japanese, give her something to do, something more to it?, this image of the Pacific, the centerpiece of the American Empire, not that preposterous, fantasy world, technocrats, Obama’s kids learning Chinese, training for the ruling class, German lessons, Legend Of Tarzan (2016), no origin story, just a Tarzan story, Tarzan was his moneymaker, trying to deal with a real horror, Belgian Congo, Tarzan in Heart Of Darkness, the villain is a historical character, Léon Rom, white savior, undignified, he and his friends don’t have hands they have mitts or paws, the mean streets, tribalistic, a book about psychological change, accepting vs. changing, married to a red princess, red indians, dealing with race (badly), Mowgli, all class, to make Billy all the tougher, they’re vicious, how many times his pistol fails him, mortal injuries, shakes it off and keeps going, it has no effect, primal brutality, one other racial element, the tracking ability of a red indian, from an era that is thinking about race all the time, its fun interesting and easy, not high art, entertaining, breezy, relaxing, all on the surface, this artifact from a period when you can get shanghaied, all the tropes, I’d like to get shanghaied!, the Taiping rebellion, emigrant cities, nationalist nonsense, regional cultures, Sisters And Strangers: Women In The Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 by Emily Honig, an immigrant city, the prototype of Chinese cities, ethnic groups, the Chinese revolutions are about class, nationalism in the context of empire, the Nationalists, the Communists, the national bourgeoisie, intellectual purges, class politics in China, the global proletariat, the Boxer Rebellion, uphold the Ching, a gendered movement, the traditional family is holding back our progress, concubinage, the most oppressed women in human history, too much into Chinese history, the exotic East, how the West sees the Cultural Revolution, the massive factory, in the news, extraditing the head of Huawei, getting between the major super-powers, The Breaker.News podcast, The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, a treaty port, majority not-white, theBreaker.news Podcast, a sign of the times.

All-Story Weekly, October 24, 1914 - THE MUCKER

The Mucker dustjacket

The Mucker, page 8

The Mucker, page 109

The Mucker

The Mucker - illustration by Frank Frazetta

BOOKS IN MOTION - The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker comic strip

Billy Byrne: The Mucker from The Greatest Adventure

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #519 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #519 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about new paperbooks, audiobooks, audio drama, and comics.

Talked about on today’s show:
it stacks up, yo!, a book for review?, 10-15 books a week!, Mr Slow, a good result, Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty To Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski will be narrated by Peter Jurasik, no Centauri accent, a yummy sausage, why do book titles end :A Novel, making yourself more fancy, a literary pretension, The Luminous Dead: A Novel?, Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan, a rhyme or reason to their thinking, serious literature, why do we need to know that?, the middle initial, affectation, pen names, standard hat, maybe it works?, superpower, Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast review of Thin Air, mean Martian tunnels, two books in one box, a duology that came together, Markswoman and Mahimata by Rati Mehrotra, secondary world fantasy, audio of the first book, 11 hours, The Luminous Dead: A Novel by Caitlin Starling, it sounds good, caving on a foreign planet, spelunking, The Descent (2005), caves of New York, Minnesota, South Dakota, maps and caves, two cool maps, Dungeons & Dragons maps, The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft, Annihilation, The Martian, Adenrele Ojo, The Ten Thousand Doors Of January by Alix E. Harrow, portal fantasy, H.G. Wells’ The Door In The Wall, time travel stories as portal fantasies, Dilation by Max Hochrad, very high level, what exactly is going on, a much bigger world than we get to see, world-building to serve the story, an elf on a log, the trailer for Dilation, Do You Want To Know More?, B7 Media, Spiteful Puppet did Robin Of Sherwood audio drama, Big Finish, new Doctor Who, so many Doctors, more visually going on with sound, BBC iPlayer Radio App or BBC Sounds, The Prisoner is really good, sitting with the ideas, Patrick McGoohan, it becomes existential, exploration, the purpose and meaning of things, Mabinogi, ancient Welsh mythology, spending time 1000 years ago, the only thing comparable in North America is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, The Lurking Fear audio drama is coming this summer, C.H.U.D.s, more audio drama, so much great audio drama is being made, our job, there’s too much, an intended 1984 dystopia, what exactly is going on, Dragonshadow: A Heartstone Novel by Elle K. White, The Coming Storm by Mark Alpert, feeling like a techno-thriller, political dystopic, climate change, Travelers, Tom Clancy books, turn that flag upside down, House Of Cards, Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin, the TV adaptation, the Michael Praed movie of Nightflyers (1987), Children Of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children Of time, how Paul manages to read paperbooks, no time for papercomics, UK authors, is there more money in audio than in paper?, only in audio releases, Audible.ca vs. Audible.com, The Pandora Room by Christopher Golden, Pandora’s box, The Phantom Empire 1935 serial, a western science fiction, Flash Gordon 1936 serial, yellowfacing, and Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu, Machete, Hobo With A Shotgun, he’s from Mongo, Last Tango In Cyberspace: A Novel by Steven Kotler, something William Gibson wrote about a protagonist named “Case” (or Cacye), coolhunters, leaning tight, The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde, magical jewels and people who resonate with them, a fun read, We Are Mayhem by Michael Moreci, Black Star Renegades, everybody likes Star Wars right?, robots and space battles, a 5 page glossary, a galactic rebellion, its exactly Star Wars, doing it your own way, since watching The Orville, Star Trek: Discovery‘s bad writing and not caring about science, Star Wars has a lot of baggage, killed off on a whim, Mark Hamill, answering honestly, wipe the slate clean, I shouldn’t walk out of the Star Wars experience and say “Really?”, going down the midichlorian walk, like Dune but awful, Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, just change the VIN, what a concept!, they don’t need Klingons, The Orville is great science fiction, I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist, epic fantasy, The Rage Of Dragons by Evan Winter, epic fantasy, a peculiar audiobook, Jesse’s mom does not know him, A Peculiar Curiosity by Melanie Cossey, speaking of being read to…, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Rainn Wilson, for adults?, jumping to the island of conclusions, Paul would not say no, For The Killing Of Kings by Howard Andrew Jones, The Three Musketeers meets the Chronicles of Amber, Paul does pre-orders, deep explorations are not always needed, looking for fun, fantasy fun, an oversized hardcover from AfterShock Comics Out Of The Blue by Garth Ennis and Keith Burns, the war between, The Punisher, Nick Fury, TKO Presents, Sara by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting, Marvel Comics, Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword Of Conan, Age Of Conan: Belit, Belit’s adventures as a young princess, why always starting as princesses?, go a-reaving, The Savage Sword Of Conan: The Original Marvel Years 1000 pages, Roy Thomas, new stuff from old stuff, Fleet Of Knives by Gareth L. Powell, Embers Of War, its better than it sounds, Ack-Ack Macaque, lots-o-fun, space opera, Powers Of Darkness: The Lost Version of Dracula by Bram Stoker and Valdimar Ásmundsson, R.C. Bray, a little bit of sexiness, a strange sidebar, The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion, Titan Books, he or she is doing everything, maybe its a house name, the technospace where you get house names to narrate, face-swap -> audio-swap, the Christopher Lee narrating a book from 2029, creepy cool, Chatting Science Fiction: Selected Interviews From The Hour Of The Wolf, WBAI, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Samuel R. Delany, Cory Doctorow, Ray Bradbury, Nalo Hopkinson, Peter S. Beagle, China Mieville, Orson Scott Card, Lucius Shepard, Nancy Kress, Ken Liu, Charlie Jane Anders, Genevieve Valentine, Susanna Clarke, Connie Willis, a curiosity, Larry Niven books turning to audiobooks, A Gift From Earth, World Of Ptavvs, Bronson Pinchot, The Moon Maze Game a new Dream Park novel, Grover Gardner, a new cover, our show on Dream Park, Inconstant Moon, a classic, Steve Barnes, The Seascape Tattoo, The Magic Goes Away episode, All The Myriad Ways, The Secret Of Black Ship Island, Jerry Pournelle, The Burning City pissed Paul the beep off, blunt and pointed, senility setting in, Building Harlequin’s Moon, Brenda Cooper, does it spark delight?, terraforming, everyone starts regressing, Brenda Cooper does good writing with Larry Niven, set in the Ringworld universe, The Integral Trees, The Smoke Ring, physics problems, an adventure to explore what ideas Larry Niven has spun up, you definitely need to do this one and here’s why:, Bowl Of Heaven, The Very Best Of the Best: 35 Years Of The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, 3 2 1, Exhalation: Stories By Ted Chiang, a new collection of Ted Chiang, Random House Audio, some copy that lives up to the hype, Ted Chiang: A Novel, Tony C. Smith’s StarShip Sofa podcast, an amazing story, Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom, standard Ted Chiang awesomeness, every three or four years he writes a story, the anti-Ken Liu, finally justified, REAL science fiction, GENUINE, “proto-technology of nano-realms”, Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson, Paul’s in a mood, INTERSTELLAR VOYAGES ARE IMPOSSIBLE, a hard truth, Aurora, the Chinese are going to the Moon, a really, really good writer, Jesse is so slow, In The Land Of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales by Lord Dunsany, edited by S.T. Joshi, Steven Crossley, pub tales, Dunsany is beautiful to hear, Clark Ashton Smith, funny and bittersweet tragic fun, LibriVox, one of these books, Who? by Algis Budrys, The Man In The Iron Mask, never made the A-team, the low end of the b-team, his biggest home run, 6 hours long, this ridiculous Cold War, propaganda, there was no “missile gap”, irrelevant and completely relevant again, Rogue Moon, an evil game show?, adapted into the film Moon (2009), hmmmmm.

Dilation - B7 Media

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Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #514 – READALONG: Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #513 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
a serial in Galaxy July and September 1972, 41 years old, out of context, people getting grumpy, autobiographical?, writing himself into his book, unnerving, “problematic”, you wont like anything, very well written, censoring oneself, all internal thoughts, a thoughtful interesting book, an interior book, racial slurs, the fakest parts are the plot points, going around in elevators, how other people perceive him at parties, the Lumumba incident, getting beaten up, ghosting student essays, websites that advertise these services, students required to submit, text comparison, tuning the voice, Columbia University, a cat and mouse game, young and strong, failing powers, a real person, the most clumsy, detecting lies, becoming telepaths, getting vibes, a metaphor for (if not science fiction), curious, casual or romantic or natural experiments, the drug scene, trapped in our own heads, comparing actions with words, complaining about the essay, super-resentful, this is not going to work out well, he’s broke all the time, so dependent on his powers, how to deal with somebody, the whole Kitty storyline, Ted Chiang’s Understand, invisible to the superpower, a cheat or not a cheat, “defend”, a science fiction novel in which the narrator is uninterested in the rules behind it, the author hasn’t revealed the rules to the narrator, he’s AM and she’s FM, undistinguished in everything, she doesn’t put up a defense, paranoid, unlock her telepathic mind, a crepazoid being creepy, annoying, bringing your psychiatry on your wife, Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark, what makes that a fantasy book, a fascinating attraction, would she have read this?, an avid reader in the 1970s, one of Silverberg’s best, as a metaphor, superbpaper.com, need help with your assignment, “we can write any paper on any subject on any deadline”, $29 per page, testimonials, making people have skills, Jesse has a lot of homework to do, Jesse’s not doing this for money, Jesse has the telepathy within narrow range, I’m dignified, he’s barely in the economy, people thinking sentences in their head, “he thinks in French”, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, a shared document, Nixon shows up in a motorcade, if this book is a metaphor, trying to be telepathic with a later audience, Isaac Asimov, Lawrence Block, they communicate their ideas super-clearly, Greg Bear’s ideas, to him it makes sense, writing as telepathy, a writer’s inability to write, the autobiographical elements, things get thin until the 1980s, there’s life inside, the life may return, a massive output from the 1950s through the 1960s, the next novel is Lord Valentine’s Castle (eight year’s later), The Stochastic Man, Shadrach And The Furnace, The Book Of Skulls, like 50 stories in 1956, the same if not more, the magazine industry, Harlan Ellison, Donald Westlake, sleeze novels, writing pornography, that wonderful sequence, hopping from mind to mind, the bee, the girl, the farmer, the full fulmination of his power, why its a tragic story, wunderkind, a pathetic shlub, cheat his way through life, stockbroker, Alan Glynn’s The Dark Fields, inside information, insider trading, Dr. Hitner, the radio drama adaptation, read comic books and enjoy myself, when he gets into a fight, telegraphed, a rag-doll to be tossed about, have sex with girls is his major ambition, Paul’s own life, why Jesse has to make such pains to distinguish himself, volatile, a lot of parallels here, supermen aren’t going to be what you think they are, in dialogue with Slan by A.E. van Vogt, “slans are schlubs”, every allusion and reference, poets, painters, playwrights, philosophers, scientists, replete with thinking about books, a very philosophical novel, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, The Hampdenshire Wonder by J.D. Beresford, semi-autobiographical, Arthur C. Clarke, he lives in our universe, a little bit too recursive, the 2001 BBC radio drama adaptation, rather condensed, he works at a bookshop, translated into an adaptation, if people complain…, Harlan Ellison and Silverberg, how much filler material they could add, the Aeschylus essay, the Franz Kafka essay in full, The Castle and The Trial, padding, fun reading, recycle some material, so fun to do that, a sad and depressing book?, tonally depressing, comparing your own life to Selig’s, The Book Of Skulls, holding back information, a very good writer, a promise to the reader, when is he composing this narrative?, nicely constructed, a blank in his history, distancing himself from himself, cheating, things are a little tight this month, because he’s given something early on in his life, manipulating the moment, if you only have 40 minutes to tell the story, the car section of the bookstore, definitely gay, the musclemen section of the bookstore, a repressed homosexual, the dean, how far you’ve fallen, this guy’s pathetic, reading about rocketships and robots, that actually hits home, he’s doing bad work for money, prostitution, his nephew, meeting Kitty on the street, so many girlfriends, I didn’t get your number but you weren’t there anyway, many many other uncles, here’s a picture of a bomb blowing somebody up, Judith probably told him to say that, the necessity of the face and the smile is the new truth, he could see beneath that truth, they’re told to smile, seeing below the surface is a grim reality, self-motivated, if you can take that away, they’re delighted to meet you, “I feel your pain.”, disdain for politicians, a very nice character piece on why it might not be so great to be telepathic, almost like growing up and not being a liar, The Return Of William Proxmire by Larry Niven, Robert A. Heinlein, “Selig’s Complaint”, Silverberg could exist without Heinlein, parallel tracks (not tracts), Judith Beheading Holofernes, parallels with Judith of the bible, a nice jewish girl’s name, Zelig (1983), first observed at a part by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the secret history of reality, Selig’s death would mean almost nothing, an incredibly underwhelming superpower, the new wave, Alfred Bester, diddly shit, the jive-speak voice, keeps failing, Jesse wrote a lot of reviews, if its just a book, if its just a book then the temptation is to shit on it, baggage of your own, the demand for reviews, writing is a superpower you can waste by using a metaphor too much, sick of the treadmill, SFSignal doesn’t blog anymore (except on Twitter), gone to be a farmer, a different and happier place, the books doesn’t stop, new or underappreciated, still a good book, slightly less stuck in its time, the black dialogue is slightly different now, a historical piece, the power of the book is still with it, having lived through things and done things, “had I read it way back when”, a book for middle aged science fiction readers, they’ll feel it, hey kids you’re going to love Dying Inside!, when you’re young you read books differently, the depth of Selig’s plight, outright sexism, a pathetic character, once you’re inside somebody’s head you pretty much have to forgive them for everything, the crisis crisis, Airplane! (1980), I speak jive, subtitles, the sentences make sense, Diff’rent Strokes, cultures with different languages and vocabularies, well worth it.

Dying Inside from Galaxy, July 1972

Dying Inside from Galaxy, September 1972

Caedmon Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside (1979)

Frank Kelly Freas illustration of Dying Inside

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #510 – READALONG: Understand by Ted Chiang

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #510 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Wayne June talk about Understand by Ted Chiang

Talked about on today’s show:
still alive, still putting out stuff, novelette, an interesting topic, intelligence and stupidity, pair things up, an interesting and complex topic, the school system, true features, a story about an incredibly stupid guy, the title is not intelligence, a long traditon in Science Fiction, Flowers For Algernon, the arc that happens within it, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, a lot of bad answers, a short theory, first impression, so success and smartness, very successful stupid people, Bill Maher on Stan Lee, wrong about a long of things, Jerry Springer, propelling interest, a calculated effect, a bigger issue, a Reading, Short And Deep, on YouTube, its about awareness, the “bubble” you’re in, the blinders you have, going back to first principles, how do you know what you think you know?, epistemology, jargon, technical talk, very skilled, you have to be super-intelligent to have written it, very studied, the integration of hard science into the story, super smooth, Arrival (2016), Story Of Your Life, the audiobook by Todd McClaren, the BBC version, a response to Flowers For Algernon, spinning out implications, fatal error, the end of the story, hypercritical, such a great metaphor, he’s a bomb, he’s about to go off, where he was coming from, lofty concepts, meta-cognition or thinking about one’s thinking, computer science, artificial intelligence, being self-aware, the nature of consciousness, the limits of our consciousness, hormone k, how far will intelligence get us, Leon and Reynolds, how to use it, conflicting philosophies and moralities, I I I, save the planet, how selfish Leon is, go transcendental, changing whole industries, the good guy won, the whole view of the outside world, the normals and their world, aesthetics and beauty vs. saving the world from itself, who are you to decide?, threw Wayne for a loop, kinda monstrous, admirable, Eric S. Rabkin, one of the few people alive I want to read, how do you think he made this?, as we see his growth, Limitless (2011), don’t bother with the TV show, super creative, stock market trading, the book, methamphetamine, set in the future, Asimov’s, August 1991, The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, came out 2001, tweaking, in manic mode, less about accumulating new knowledge, going over and over and over, the way this story gives you the sense of intelligence growth, playing ahead, if this happens then this will happen, hacks in to a terminal at his doctor’s office, service port, a desktop safe, bio-metric device with a service port, all these steps to think ahead, what we think of as chess, teaching chess, constricting an opponents movements, fewer choices, anticipating, gestalt, an organized whole that is perceived than more than the sum of its parts, micromanaging details of everything, the gestalt of everything, the ultimate meaning of everything, as a result of his powers, read a person’s body language, intentions and nature, the smell of their pheromones, microscopic details, one little thing, the whole is much more than the sum of their parts, Sherlock Holmes to the nth degree, time chess to speed chess, transcendental enlightenment, he’s Buddha, the point of the story, an infinite staircase, close to futile, other creature’s intelligence, a critical mass thing, reading a Lovecraft story, consonance and resonance and sonar, animals that use sonar, bats and whales, sperm whales, massive resonance chambers, free divers, six times the size of a human brain, they have no hands, can’t forge metal, and have no writing implements, Icarus and Daedalus, father and son, godlike in their abilities, just like in Watchmen, already won, already in the trap, the note at the doctor’s office, gloating, his undoing, a real thing and a real phenomenon, vocabulary words, that gestalt and that surprise, the guy with the psychedelic shirt, an Inception (2010) story, literally happening all around us, advertising, my friend Maissa Bessada, skeletons, lesbians, two more skeletons, a pattern of acceptance and dissolving your preconceptions, that scene in Total Recall (1990), this is exactly why this is so effective (is because it can be so affective), René Girard’s triangular desire or mimetic desire, other monkeys, supreme manipulators, don’t participate or try to minimize it, the dominant chatter, chatter controls action, a slowdown, intelligence as getting what you want, what drops out of the story is everybody else in society, what makes Reynolds the good guy, a group animal, meaning and intelligence are tied together in a strong way, bad at math, can brain damage make you better at math?, his regret is evident, idiot savants, the CIA, Greco, accurate in assessing Reynolds, a reliable narrator, merely a savior, his judgement is optimal, how he justifies himself, people don’t trust themselves, a meta-human, how we’re supposed to think of him, once as an experiment on a drug dealer, testing your power, Joe Rogan, UFC, which system of fighting is the best system, how do you test it?, which techniques is really better, jujitsu, Steven Seagal, all about the testing, what techniques work, testing our limits, what animals do when they’re young, a drug dealer, drug users, a beneficent god in a certain sense, not without sin, not necessarily unironic, I dissolve, Word is capitalized, the Logos, page 116, the sentence that when uttered will destroy the mind of the listener, it makes the title a really clever punchline, meta-awareness, self-awareness, ultimate understanding, taxing the limits of the structure of my brain, tricks him into understanding, the trap, he’d already programmed him, triggering the word, he got what he wanted, very good, a really clever punchline, less science than it is fantasy, fetal brain tissue, repair when not rejected, anoxia, damage more parts of his brain, his former life, there’s no girlfriend, a business, looking at Understand through the lens of The Dark Fields, a line from The Great Gatsby, a book about people without purpose, enhancing what you have, about methamphetamine, to speed people up, more active, paradoxical effect, your brain is not an engine, the Le Mans 24 hour race, the continual racing, testing to endure, an extended amount of high performance, Reynold’s weapon, implants the mandala, beyond his endurance, a metaphor, composing poetry, emotional impacts from words, the right combination of words can make an audience explode, pointing to real things, how writers and ad writers get their money, an impact on the reader, we change our lives, we sacrifice peoples lives for words, more real than most things, those whales without tools, they have lives we can never understand, what they’re communicating and how they even live and hunt is incredibly complex, very rare, the lives of beings that are not like us, Lucy (2014), psychokinetics, Morgan Freeman babbling, that stupid bullshit, most people don’t use the engine at maximum RPM, sleep, rest for the cars engine, a new air filter, stress tests, adrenalin, a super fuel, super good, Mr Jim Moon puts out a lot of podcasts, working smart, have a plan and be open, wherever you can get progress you push, the journey of a thousand miles, Rome wasn’t built in a day, the Devil’s in the details, navigating and picking which ones to go with, attempts at wisdom, when smart people say stupid things, committed to a system or a person, made commitments that they were unwilling to examine, Exhalation, a robot who opens up his own brain, the Galen of the robot universe that he lives in, pneumatic, a self-consistent brilliant idea, examining the internal to examine the external, Jesse’s not a drug guy, the brain is thinking, the body is thinking, so inside your own brain, focus, memory and thought and action, a brilliant guy, amazing stories, he can’t really tell the truth here, he knows what truth sounds like and it sounds like this, that poetic canto, the art, two naked dudes, a skull brain, climbing out of his own brain, representing out two main characters, a metaphor for the hyper-intelligence, a symbol, not the size of your brain, brain body ratio, Protector by Larry Niven, a particular drive, how certain kinds of intelligence to survive, hummingbirds, we can create niche (or destroy the niche) we’re in, there are stupid people, lead, fetal alcohol, no comic books for 20 years, behavior, the right habits, intention and purpose, a self appointed savior, incompatible, almost into programing, no quotation marks, the meta-textual text you may miss in the audio, only one bit that tells you its in the future, Pittsburgh, white air filter masks, not necessarily a pollution thing, hoodies, restricting vision, feeling cozy, women are more likely to wear masks, all sorts of reasons, welder masks, keeping skin pale, it allows you to hide, license to do it, you’re the crazy ones, a critical mass, trends, everybody used to wear hats, the fashion man, smoking their asses off, vaping, people who would have been ashamed to be smoking, wearing baseball hats, cowboy hats, fake street kids, $200 t-shirts, strange phenomenon, what makes this story fantastic (fantasy), could there ever be a drug or hormone, a metaphor for a kind of approach to that direction, like the ending of Dagon, past tense with present tense interruptions, we don’t expect the ending because told first person in present tense, “I’m standing” not “I was standing”, Ted Chiang is doing what Reynolds is doing and we’re the protagonists.

Understand by Ted Chiang

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #489 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964: The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #489 – The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein; read by L.J. Ganser. This is an unabridged reading of the novelette (1 hour, 33 minutes) followed by a discussion of the Blackstone Audio audiobook of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 and The Roads Must Roll.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott, Paul Weimer, and Marissa Vu

Talked about on today’s show:
The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Volume I, the mid-1980s, this one looks really long, a good exercise, reviewing collections, summarizing stories, quick opinion, get the audiobook and dole them out very gently, Microcosmic God, disgusting to rush, the audiobook is fantastic, superior, so good, one caveat, songs, tunes, Fondly Fahrenheit may be the greatest science fiction ever written, Cold Equations is important, Alfred Bester, tension apprehension and dissension have begun, reet in the heat, missing tunes, X-Minus One, cheery and cool, Oliver Wyman, Scanners Live In Vain, the cranch voice, if you had to narrate which story would you pick?, all so different all so good, Paul would go with Coming Attraction, that sad mournful ending, New York, tugging at Paul’s heart, the mangled Empire State Building, the girl is playing him, Paul could bring that pain, such male author stories, Stanley Weinbaum’s A Martian Odyssey, Judith Merril, The Quest For Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher, very Catholic, the pope keeps his ring in his shoe, apostolic, the filth encrusted wooden table, robass – a robot donkey, jeep, The Huddling Place, Clifford D. Simak, no conflict in his stories, the guy needs to leave his house, the stakes are big, caught by Simak, The Goblin Reservation, so relatable, too late, sort of a metaphor for life right now, conversations about which stories to read, this is great!, science fiction stories can resonate even stronger later on than when they were published, 1944, all about today, all his friends are elsewhere, bullshit at the airport and the border, stay home in my mansion, the horrors of bureaucratic awfulness, hotel food, you fight to travel, the shore I know, a traveling armchair, The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov, agoraphobia, where Asimov read Simak, City, we need a narrator for The Trouble With Ants by Clifford D. Simak, future history, the rise of the dogs, Jesse would narrate Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson, not my life experience, Marissa gets it now, Jesse’s Roof Bear friends, ESL/EAL, making acronyms, drawing little pictures, bare means naked, a bare roof has no bear, Cellar Feller, a green monster chained to the wall of the basement, unchained the monster, told from the monster’s point of view, Flowers For Algernon, “Screen Stars”, you have to infer so much, a simple and thoughtful POV, it has niceness inside of it, after yet another beating, That Only A Mother, the horrors of mutation, The Crawlers, The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick, radiation, E.E. Doc Smith, Them! (1954), giant ants, the psychic wound of nuking cities, the white guys do science fiction anthology, sameness in assumed viewpoint, plenty of SF women writers, James Nichol, Nebula award folks (SFWA writers), introductions, a terrible introduction for telling you about the stories, one decision of editors, novelists and co-writers, switching over to weird fiction, ‘women had to hide their identities behind male pseudonyms’, weird fiction authors, science fiction poetry and novels are well represented, one and half women, Nightfall is a dud because it is long and it doesn’t need to be, it needs to be read, writing to an image and a final scene, slow buildup, that final realization, fear vs. wonder, the celestial mechanics don’t really work, a wondrous image, that religious or anti-religious thing, who are we arguing with, the writers from 1970, The Country Of The Kind by Damon Knight, Arena by Fredric Brown, Tishiro Mifune vs. Lee Marvin (Hell In The Pacific), where is Philip K. Dick?, Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth, The Marching Morons, terrible but interesting, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, an important story, a rage inducing story, the most influential science fiction story ever written?, responses to it, very H.G. Wells in its execution of thought, clean and pure vs clunky and arbitrary, character is really not very important in science fiction, western genre, baseball magazines, railroad magazines, True Detective, those are all dead and gone, they’re not full of idea, the universe doesn’t care about you, you are mistaken sir, designed by committee, John W. Campbell, the story that it is, the story we needed, take a spacewalk, fascinating, pure poetry, Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny, serviceable, all about the idea, The Nine Billion Names Of God, beautifully executed and a mindblower, The Star, was it right for God to destroy a whole civilization just to get a baby Jesus, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human, Some Of Your Blood, Venus Plus X, the Frankenstein story retold, the definite mad scientist story, Sandkings by George R.R. Martin, in dialogue, massive differences, Kidder, ideas vs. entertainment, Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, incredibly well written, Sturgeon’s style, that Heinleinian feel, First Contact by Murray Leinster, Star Trek, a view of the 20th century, feeling futuristic still, visiplates, when flatscreens first came out, visiplates everywhere, mirrors out the visiplates, the Apollo program had mirrors, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a story of The Martian by Andy Weir, a great description, a bird monster alien being eaten by a cthulhu creature, Tweel, better aliens than any aliens, language, a United Nations of accents, a classic of Science Fiction, laying the groundwork for later SF, the entirety of John W. Campbell’s theory, Jack Vance, really good story, delightfully light and fun and thought provoking, impossible, funny and tragic in so many little moments, Twilight by John W. Campbell, a hitchhiking time traveller, light and breezy and old fashioned sexist?, Helen O’Loy by Lester Del Rey is a satire, out of context, its beautiful, she kills herself, true love, porn addiction, it feels very modern, very influential, The Stepford Wives, Ex Machina, Fondly Fahrenheit, The Weapon Shop by A.E. Van Vogt, PKD became obsessed with A.E. Van Vogt, the Null stories, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, the alien from Alien, Slan, a very good reading, the arbitrary weirdness that happens and the small businessman, how you feel when you’re reading a PKD book, community, migrating to another planet, somebody gets me!, these are the rules now, no boobs, sentient nipples, nobody cheating on his wife, Rudyard Kipling really influenced Heinlein, The Seesaw, Mimsy Were The Borogroves by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, creepy weird SF, Alice In Wonderland, Kuttner’s radical viewpoint, C.L. Moore’s style and image, Zero Hour by Ray Bradbury, Reading, Short And Deep, very pairable, Vintage Season, like a business, making a living together, our Scanners Live In Vain show, the best Martian Chronicles story, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Million Year Picnic, Usher II, Kornlbuth was snarky or amazing, Surface Tension by James Blish, pantropic series, a Joseph Smith and the golden plates going on, using their gametes, they won’t remember us, untarnishable, a few microns, a science fiction story about sea monkeys, rocket technology, a whole funny cute little thing, Stephen Baxter’s Flux, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Expert System’s Brother, Jerome Bixby’s A Good Life, The Twilight Zone episode, Daniel Keyes, the shorter version is better, adapted many times, an emotional trainwreck, Ted Chiang’s Understand, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, exploring the consequences of giving superhuman abilities, developmental disabilities, mocked by the people at the bakery, if you just become a libertarian…, the Ayn Rand version of this story, The Country Of The Kind is in dialogue with The Country Of The Blind by H.G. Wells, there’s no such thing as vision, a horror story about an evil man, Alfred Bester’s The Roller-Coaster, Robert Silverberg’s Passengers, putting avatars through hell for your own amusement, once the people in your VR worlds are smart enough to feel real, the pleasure-pain syndrome is not available in this unit, A Rose For Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny, Mars getting smaller and smaller, strong religious themes, Lord Of Light, a Hindu thing going on, an Amber fan, when he uses his kung-fu, smoking, “Mr Gee, piped Morton.”, why was this Heinlein story chosen, it’s a representative story, Gentlemen, Be Seated, a character who knows things taking someone around and giving him a tour, social stuff, a rebellion of labour against “the Man”, functionalism, how important a position is to economics, a real phenomenon, a real paper from 1930, a certain kind of philosophy, Douglas-Martin screens, the mid-sixties, The Man Who Sold The Moon, cars are not a really great idea, how are we going to recover from it?, the rise of suburbia, the depletion of inner cities, urban sprawl, cars are going to kill us, what are the social implications, going for big ideas, a labour intensive technology, he works it out in such detail, we should all expect rockets to the Moon, ancient journeys to the Moon, what about slidewalks, airports have them, a conveyor belt that pulls people along, castles in the sky but in science fiction, I have this vision of the United States remade, how would all this work, the union that runs this machine, a militarized union, a fascinating exploration of Science Fiction that proves the point Scott is making, here’s an idea – what would it mean, some guy from Australia, Airplane! (1980), it all comes to nothing (except its amazing), a weird strain of science fiction, look at what people can do, grand ideas to solve upcoming problems, the law of unintended consequences, who are putting you life in the hands of, so different physically, the internet cables, shutting the internet off for 8 hours, when Wikipedia shutdown, the screen is black, so many people are affected, why is my website not working?, when Ronald Regan broke the air traffic controller’s union, if you accept the basic premise,

The fictional social movement he calls functionalism (which is unrelated to the real-life sociological theory of the same name), advances the idea that one’s status and level of material reward in a society must and should depend on the functions one performs for that society.

meritocracy, the elite that runs the country, we need superdelgates, who are the depolarables?, binders full of assholes, anybody who didn’t go to an ivy league university or doesn’t work for a military contractor, testing out his whole theory, what the saboteurs want, the philosophy behind the story, compare with Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, votes for veterans, “fight the wars” say the chickenhawks, a real problem, if you cant service the servos, in today’s society, why is Heinlein even talking about this?, in the Navy, peacetime officers, during wartime incompetence can kill you, the Scientology Wikipedia entry, L. Ron Hubbard, removed from command twice for incompetence, this is not a tenable situation in an emergency, these guys deserve more power because they have more skill, exploring the idea, they’re all competent, extreme competence, breaking psychologically, for the good of society, a fascinating fact, the R.C.M.P., Preston, Nelson, Dudley, a paramilitary force, when the RCMP are protesting they wear jeans, Coquitlam, Vancouver, Port Moody, what are the union members fighting for?, the right to quit and take another job, the plot comes after the idea, so awesome, a roadside diner on a moving road, how to move people, buses and trains, railroad magazines, every kind of of thing you can imagine about railroading, solar power, obsessed with the idea, the poor Australian, under what circumstances aren’t there better choices?, not practical, he proves they are impractical, all these engineers, a story about a bus company, the buses are shutdown, he maximizes it in certain places, general strikes, a strong man at the top, a straw man to knock down, someone with large hands, New York City stopping allowing cars, self-driving cars, a really efficient traffic pattern, a Netflix subscription service, electric scooters parked everywhere, the key to efficiency, what Scott sees, ransomwaring, working at Vodafone, loyalty to the company, X-Minus One, Dimension X, a fairly long story, tumblebugs, Segways, how humiliating it is, child sized bikes, the cover of Astounding, June 1940, they have guns, engineer and policeman, engineer and soldier, the ultimate in Heinleinian competence, we have to come to some arrangement, horror danger, going the horror direction, Farnham’s Freehold, some doofus, old man and his son-in-law, castration for being an idiot, nuclear war, are they going to be aiming here?, Fallout 3 or 4, a park of the black overlords, listen to papa boss, what would the United States be like if Heinlein had become president?, The Return Of William Proxmire by Larry Niven, failed politician, science fiction happens anyway, public works, moon program, an Eisenhowery-father figure, super-anti-communist, what kind of sex scandals would we be having in the White House if Heinlein were President?, what Secretary should Philip K. Dick become, Secretary of The Interior, Jack Vance could be Secretary Of State, James Triptree Jr could be director of CIA, Cordwainer Smith, Ray Bradbury as Vice President, Isaac Asimov as Science advisor, H.P. Lovecraft on immigration, somebody could write a book, Fredosphere, an interdimensional adventure, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont, L. Sprague De Camp, Lester Dent, Doc Savage, Green Fire by Eileen Gunn, Andy Duncan, Pat Murphy and Michael Swanwick, wild and weird, 2011, Jack London, Hawaii, The Philadelphia Experiment, final thoughts, the Scientology people outside, “Trying to live in a high-speed world with low-speed people is not very safe. The way to happiness is best traveled with competent companions.”, “Do Not Murder”, the way to happiness.

The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse Willis