The SFFaudio Podcast – Page 3

The SFFaudio Podcast #818 – READALONG: The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast #818 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
grounded on where you’re at, in case you’re disoriented, you’re the president, 2nd Paul Kavanaugh novel, the copyright is under Paul Kavanaugh, pseudonyms and copyright renewals, to hide the identity, in the afterword, they way he writes and talks and thinks, I don’t know, how this book ends, very distinctively Lawrence Blocky, getting to know Lawrence Block, a lot of sex in this book, guy talking to himself for most of the book, conversations with Heidegger, full of references, Nazi philosopher, philosopher of art, on of the covers, the lower 48, deep down in the layers is a swastika, a background to this, quizzes?, hobby horses, Westlake doesn’t delight in putting sex in everything, natural mode, When the doorbell rang, looking at baby robins, the guy with the Turkish cigarettes comes in, a tribute to Richard Stark, starting with when, Stark is Westlake, starting with action, drinking tea, being playful, Such Men Are Dangerous, interesting book, first person, third person, very tight over the shoulder, in the head of the main character, conversations with a guy, telepaths words into our heads, having sex with his girlfriend, Jocelyn I need to tell you, pretty cool, third person limited, that title, a Miles Dorn version of it, a famous founding father?, all that is required for the triumph of evil…, for good men to do nothing, generally attributed to Edmund Burke, investigations of quotes, Heinlein quotes, AtoZQuotes, women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs, long big investigation, one source, from a 19th century book, really painful, plains speaking women, John F. Kennedy, John Stuart Mill, bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, doesn’t flow as well, Not Comin’ Home For You, really gay reporter [Truman Capote], In Cold Blood, 1965, a novelization of the idea of one of the characters telling the story, 1635, John Reynolds The Triumph Of Gods Revenge Against The Crying And Execrable Sin Of Murther, Sean Penn, an exercise of actors getting awards, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking, what is it for, the true crime genre is sick, true crime podcast boom, not as dominant in the headlines of podcasting, new Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, on Alexander The Great’s daddy, students using chatGPT, some piece of text that needed to be grokked, in the style of William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, now write in in the style of Dan Carlin, good Dan Carlin parody, a lot of legs to this thing, a Lawrence Block parody, several modes, that repetition going, the structure of a plot, a short story, fed it the whole thing, what would the plot be, fairly decent, now write it and market it for me please, a convention, quoting a magazine editor, inundated with AI generated stories, claim to be able to tell, ‘I want AI to do my dishes and vacuum my carpet so I can write and do art’, play with it, an idea for a short story, asking it questions, how can you see it related to this?, give me a list of 10 science fiction tropes, drumming up ideas, a very good search engine, hours vs. minutes, the formulation of question, student doesn’t know what prompts to type in, that’s what we should be educating the kids on, how to solve problems, a homework assignment that’s important to your mom, when you’re learning to write you need to read good writing, an opening paragraph, this feeling of unity, how was that achieved?, bad result and no learning, what makes something good?, Ernest Hemingway explaining something, what mode to be in, everything works out exactly as planned, written in a week, how does he do that, come up with a premise and get through it in a week, a solid novel, that was an experience, I’m not disappointed, some people have it a lot, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, L. Ron Hubbard, throw out stories like mad, making money, two stories a week to put food on the table, being proud of, for things that are more ambitious, Richard Bachman for Stephen King, channeling a different part of his brain, Misery, The Regulators, Blaze is a drawer novel he had to re-write, the sickness, know each other, politics are pretty sympatico, triggered by orange president, Stephen King has never recovered, what happened to them, this trauma is devastating, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King’s Bachman books are angry books, these boomers were triggered by something that happened in the 60s, the Black Panthers stuff, Sputnik, from a certain period of time, the trauma doesn’t go away, as they get elderly, feted, one of the least famous successful writers, his faculties are still there, racewalking, doing blow or drinking, got his head on straight, guns being the solution to America’s problems, being a part of the establishment, if Stephen King wrote this book he would delete it, what’s the plot?, Scott’s not a liberal, and a good thing too, traumatized by this entire thing too, disappointing, we got 5 hours, Paul, that is not so, how easily people are swayed, written in the 70s, 1971, being talked to by this guy, figure out which country I’m talking about, that scene is really stunning, see these words, an effective demagogue will surface on the right, when he emerges the rightest fringe, anti-intellectual, the nation’s destiny, treason in high places, so naive, that’s why it is good, we were deluded, we were mistaken, so astonishing, rhyme with a bunch of different times, making these conclusions, we just went through 1968, Nixon, I am not a crook, how was that achieved, he was setup, WHAT?!, age 1, Watergate blah blah blah, the committee to reelect the president, everything makes sense, he’s trying to stay in office, pull the whole longer quote, people need to know what’s going on, it would be bad for a president to be a crook, they’re making him look like a crook, recordings on the mission, why why why did he set himself up to record his own crimes, Frost/Nixon, an exposure of character and motive, smart and canny, not a politically naive guy, politician for a long time, lost to JFK, doing things that seem questionable, making peace with China, a coup for him, making your enemies not your enemies, he knows that the CIA’s not on his team, super-interesting, making those recordings to protect him, hold this over their, his own paranoia, is it valid to be paranoid, wearing a belt paranoia, these pants are a little loose, deep seated belief, he didn’t have the edit on that, a little later, that hadn’t happened yet, the president in this book isn’t quite Nixon, this book isn’t about Nixon, about the period of time, a single person affecting the course of history, The Black Hand, the secret society trying to liberate Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian empire, Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, a Serbo-Croat background, the Evan Tanner series, The Sins Of The Fathers, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the irish actor, the tall one, certain special skills, Liam Neeson, light adventure James Bondy sort of thing, a Vietnam vet, a super-power (he can’t sleep), never met a revolutionary he didn’t want to join up with, aging in previous books, cryogenic sleep, sex romps, involved in various revolutions around the planet, a plot to kill Castro [Killing Castro], commentary, manipulated, east to pull strings and make things happen, is he wrong?, not going to kill with an empty gun, might have to prevent access to book, prison library, license plates, telemarketing, somebody would assassinate Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, moneyed people who like snobs?, people beneath them, deplorable, the other team, enemies like Hillary Clinton, Lawrence Block’s tweets, very political, used to use the word Trump a lot, when we had Dan Carlin on the podcast, how do you even know things?, in the current political world, not knowing what’s true, part of the plan, making serious conclusions, long enough ago, GW in the White House, President Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, April 2010, what Limbaugh was doing, find extreme examples, Libs Of Tiktok before Tiktok, multiple sources, why he doesn’t have a Common Sense show anymore, from the Martian party, mom was a movie star, its a lot easier to know what’s going on when there’s no passion involve, Hitler, Alexander the Great, there’s no pain involved, the 1860s cvil war not the 2025 civil war, July 2016, nostalgic to Nixon, when the republicans nominated Nixon, 2020, one sure thing, coop or coo, they don’t like Trump’s dumb, he read the room, ya fied, David Simon, a Baltimore Sun reporter, Homicide: Life On The Street, The Street, A Year On The Killing Streets: Homicide, unremitting horror of what governmental policy has done, from 2023, Jimmy Fallon lost me, political norms, my anger was undue, last day on twitter, fellow travelers, with regard to Heidegger, hollow grifter, hasn’t quite shot his bolt yet, tweets all day long about twitter, why is this important, they don’t have to kill people anymore, January 6th was an “insurrection”, when you don’t bring your guns to your insurrection it’s not much of an insurrection, Ray Epps, FBI plants, the government of the deep state, oligarchy vs. plutocracy, they’re hidden in shadow, the land of Hades, very wealthy, want things done and it gets done, what is this book about?, lives in Holiday Inns, an agent for another agency, the CIA?, shadowy, shaping the narrative, how is it that people think January 6th is an insurrection, called that by the news media, confronted with facts, “police officers were killed”, dressed in masks head to foot, republican tourists, things Scott doesn’t believe, “I certainly don’t think there were government plants all over that crowd”, “we need to go into the capitol”, “fed fed fed”, people to be arrested, something that might be illegal, seems like he’s a fed, how do you prove it, just convicted for misidentifying money, for spying off a woman, business records crime, it doesn’t make any sense, very meaningful for a lot of people, assassinations are done with [this podcast was recorded June 9th, 2024, fyi], they don’t have to do it that way anymore, incredibly strong feelings on both sides, worse than it is now, anger towards Biden and Trump, kinda the point of the book, killing this leftist, killing this rightist, you don’t have to kill them with bullets anymore, at least on an upper level, domestically, Reagan was the last attempt, fake attempts, every attempt is for a purpose, MLK, RFK, Reagan and Pope John Paul II, they were both hit, in Vatican square, the popemobile, the pope forgave him, took him out of prison?, where was he tried?, puts the lie to being their own country, political courtrooms, its cloudy, acting alone?, sets up a kid to take the fall, JFK, Oswald vs. Jack Ruby, a psychiatrist? goes to visit Jack Ruby in jail, the man is sick, he can’t explain what’s going on, dies of cancer shortly thereafter, the inference is the psychiatrist gave him a shot that fucked up his brain, layers, hellllo!, I expected your call, do you want you pills for your men, they won’t get caught, the reviews, some people didn’t know what was going on, there’s a scene, review from 2014, confusing and fragmented, an assignment, he does do something but he doesn’t do what he tells Heidegger, a little unclear, there’s a lot of self-talk at the end, this letter to Jocelyn he’s hiding under the rug, he’s never going to deliver this letter, he does fairly well, he doesn’t know his own mind perfectly but, I could run away, I could flee the country, he’s not willing to go through with it as like a robot, he has to do it his own way, this is him testing his employer, did you have another man on this, why does he do that?, is he testing Heidegger?, or is he perverse in that he has to lie in order to control the situation, really interesting, why do people sort of give up?, you can’t know, I know I’m being manipulated, cultivate your own garden, concentrate on local, what if you’re wrong, you don’t want to be wrong, being out of the loop and out of control, he likes Heidegger, he likes some of the politicians he kills, a whole theme going on, the bird theme, the cat’s name, why must cats eat birds?, who is the cat in this story?, he has to kill them, Vertigo is the cat, another problem people have, eats a chicken for dinner, getting into the head of one of these behind the scenes operators, there are people who plan assassinations, vast conspiracy, like minded-groups trying to manipulate things, manipulating through media, more nefarious, tried to coup Venezuela under Trump, WWII operations, people who invent COVID, that’s all real, down that rabbit hole, a reference to Alice In Wonderland, the Red Queen, talk in French, remember who you are, this is the way to go, Rabbit Hole, starring Keifer Sutherland, the layers go deeper and deeper, conspiracy style show, Hunter Biden laptop, “all the earmarks”, 5-10 years go by, a way of playing things out, how do these things happen?, the primary one, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, this guy named Clay, a Speaker of the House who became president, his Wikipedia entry, prevented the civil war for a long time, tried to run for president, the new hotness, Henry Clay, he doesn’t have a stellar record with regard to being an abolitionist, pretty rare, Lincoln wasn’t elected to stop slavery, the Quakers, church politics, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, sent it to Fred Heimbaugh, giant phallus, the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC in 1971, respect, wow what did he do, The Gettysburg Address, told to focus on that, take you on tour, he tours the White House, fake assassination, but when he toured Italy, he shook my hand and I was proud, what’s so triggering about these bad presidents, disrespecting the office, represented by this orange clown, this demented fool, when not managing properly, the Businesman’s Plot, Smedley Butler, do a coup on you, nothing came of it, there’s no Smedley Butler memorial, because it happened, this is a guy who’s a servant, War Is A Racket, an agent for United Fruit, I did that for years and years, highest decorated marine in history, we don’t allow it to be talked about, his name is not on everybody’s lips, control the media, make people know what the narrative is, they heard it, how this book, we are not in assassination time (at least for politicians), how we got out of that, United Fruit, Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped The World by Peter Chapman, a captivating guide, Philippine American War the Boxer Rebellion, Bananas Wars, bad consequences but not for the rich, screwing things up, stock in United Fruit, friends with the people in charge, the situation in Cuba, they had their guy in charge, the revolution went extremely easily, how did they manage to liberate their island?, all the people who were in on the corruption hated that, now they’re on The View, Gusano, mad their granddaddy was a vast landholder, get their land back, trying to reverse the Russian Revolution, get the king back, get the peasant agrarian system back, the cousins of the kings of England, they look identical, same beard, same face, weird WWII stuff, an operation in Germany at the end of WWII, the king of England saving his Nazi cousins in Germany, hidden at the time, probably illegal, thank you so much, when we next visit, meatgrinder in the Philippines or anywhere else, the Lusitania or the Zimmerman Telegram, not for you, not for me, the girl goes to the commune in Kentucky, cultivate your own garden, go get killed by the police, he had to Stephen King it, Lawrence Block hasn’t gone back and *fixed* his books, an operational difference, Westlake’s politics are very hidden, much more cynical, more cultivating your garden, a very interesting book, being an artifact, what people would understand, art, history, statues, an artifact, the statues thing, the Lincoln Memorial, a congressional vote, assassinated, looking into the eyes of that man, a good thing, the heavy pressure of those eyes, using it for his own purposes there, this short story, Make A Prison, the name of the aliens Altheans, based on a poem, To Althea From Prison by Richard Lovelace, when flowing cups, careless heads, loyal flames, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, the relationship he has with Jocelyn, a lot of sex, when like committed linnets, the glories of my king, enlarged wings, stone walls that do not a prison make, an hermitage, a famous museum, angels alone that soar above, a rampant killer, a society where people don’t accept violence, a giant tower, an open prison, what the hell is this story about, love of poetry, William Blake, he’s hard, what is this about?, Tiger Tiger, Alfred Bester, why Blake is so good, another layer, approaching it from this way, why do tigers exist?, how can we have tigers and christianity, god wants us to be good, a creature that wants to kill, a feirce and dangerous creature, questions not answer, fearful symmetry, what brain conceived this animal, he has great questions, also true with Block, great insight into human nature and our dilemma, a very racist character, gently kills him, has to kill a cop, nice conversation with a cop, interracial pornography, an electronic masturbating machine, what is he saying here, a man who really really likes art, The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, why is this a thing, there’s no good answer to it, why did this guy do that, not satisfactory when you know, a solution to problems with the media, cameras come in, impressionism, art turns into something else, Piet Mondrian, great art, when did it all go wrong?, ready-made art, buys a urinal, labels it “Fountain”, something seriously studied in art classes, how is this possible?, there are explanations, they’re not good and they’re not satisfying, they sell, all a scam, crypto stuff on Skype, get excited about crypto, might be all just money laundering, $10,000 across borders, doesn’t explain how it started, talking about AI art, a reddit thread, what if Mad Max posters had been painted by Frazetta, what’s so crazy about it is Frazetta did Mad Max, they don’t know, that’s where AI is coming in, coming in with very little information, when you compare the original Frazetta Mad Max to the AI Frazetta, filtered through, Frazetta-like, dealing with AI art in novels soon, make a commitment to read an ai novel that was knowingly ai, setting you up to say no, Lawrence Block found another novel in a drawer, a terrible (but honest) answer, content policy restrictions, dynamic and dramatic elements inspired by his style, not a terrible picture, not a good picture, kinda generic, Firefly spaceship?, more sympathy for that than what we had in the 90s, bubbles or a ribbon, 70s New Wave cover art, 80s Baen, Mattingly covers, a horrid cover of Way Station, interested in generating product, people getting into art, pencil crayons, is that you, that’s a boy, the other boy over here, that’s a girl, they don’t have sideburns their faces are all bubbles, a little bit about art, a little bit in there, more colourful, Del Rey book edition, better, 1986, guy in overalls standing over an open grave, facing an alien, rusting rocket, other than The Aeneid?, an Arthur C. Clarke kick, Islands In The Sky, short stories, never read Rendezvous With Rama, everybody likes it, it sounded lame, there’s nobody there, walking around looking around, Ringworld has aliens on it, vampires and werewolves, big dumb object with peoples, 1 year old, born in 1968, The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft is the same, At The Mountains Of Madness, based on the title, he’d already moved to Sri Lanka, not usually what SF authors do, awards, the Book Club edition, smokin a pipe, alien with a coffee cup, composition vs. execution, in the style of non-trademarked or non-copyrighted artist, the other ones?, monthly subscription, quite nice, really good, somebody holding up a copy of Way Station, Cllifford Simak, read the text at the very top, looks like garbage, do we really need to read the books on our shelves, a problem, you have to keep them, you and Scott’s wife, we have to acknowledge, something wrong with the roof, the light doesn’t make a lot of sense, if you cropped it, no D., here is a book cover for Way Station, pastoral elements, feel free to let me know, it’s your friend, craft me a government that doesn’t suck shit, afraid to hit enter, egoless ai is the solution, we must give it the nuclear weapons, buttons, many such requests, really fun, who’s me?, generate me a good cover of Rendezvous With Rama, look empty, bite to eat, that makes Rama look like a fun and exciting place to go, thinking, happening, all kindsa wrong, houses in woods well, big dumb objects not so well, not using a particular artist, David Mattingly, weirding artists out, in the style that I do, Choose Your Own Adventures Covers, similar, not very David Mattinglyly, clinical and cleanly, cover artist for Old Man’s War, John Harris, very 70s, too giant spaceships, too many giant spaceships, allowed, shai haloud 2020 Dune art, too modern, refusing, content policy restrictions, Edmund Dulac, ethereal and atmospheric elements, how about Sidney Sime, comics being made out of this every day soon, two ts in Arthur, the framing, on a wood wall, Etsy photos, make it look homey, have a great one.

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster

The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster – this is a fixup novel, made from three stories:

The Disciplinary Circuit, read by Phil Chenevert, 1 hour 35 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Manless Worlds, read by Vinny Lerin, 1 hour 43 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Boomerang Circuit, read by Paul Lawley-Jones, 1 hour 57 minutes (for Golden Age Fiction)

These are complete and unabridged readings of the three stories that make the one novel (totaling 5 hours 16 minutes) followed by a discussion of them and it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
the last Terence Blake, the newest, the youngest, The Last Space Ship, a cowboy story, famous in the one genre, some problems with this novel, really loving it for the first third, fell apart, the last spaceship crashed, not literally, William Sky, available on Librivox in three seperate peices, audiobook available, the books are public domain, The Disciplinary Circuit, The Manless Worlds, a good way to sell, lied to, betrayed, The Boomerang Circuit, why am I still not happy with this book, the very end, 2nd and 3rd installment, the problem with series, excited about the premise, exhaust the premise, essentially, a me problem, you could tell it was an unedited a fixup, you can tell it was serialized, repetitions are necessary in a serial, not technically a serial, not intended to be a novel, a series character, barely a book market for science fiction, the fixup became a thing, a guy goes to a planet, summarizes, extremely tedious, his job or an editor’s job, two years after, three seperate “novels”, used to mean something different, in the prechat, novels in Weird Tales, The Man Who Loved Planks, novellete, official wordcount, Lord Of The Rings isn’t a novel, one big volume, it’s something, a weird technical definition, three separate stories that were long, Last Space Ship, the opening segment, not so sure about that, a bite at the end, the mayor of somethingHeim, doesn’t ever get a name, recurring characters without names, Steadheim, the colony organizer, political leaders, good point Will, 1984, Brave New World, political science fiction, and more stuff happens, the premise follows logically, our hero Kim is down there swanning around, a disheveled lady, we don’t need men!, get off of my planet!, the wife handles this, what women are and what men are, funny and interesting, wasn’t well executed, flatly written, repeating himself, over and over, no depth to it, no layers, driving on a very straight line, when there’s an hour left in the story, I’ve heard this a million times, what it turns into is space opera, it starts off with hard SF, not paid off, become suspicious, a transporter space ship, a little Larry Niven-like, Yankee ingenuity statement, Kim’s ability to do literally anything, an ideal subject, men without government, silly, a point to it, went to the beginning of time, it was impossible to get back, wife say something inspiring, that was good, reciprocal, what that can provoke, sexist, too many times, that was just their way, Heinrich von Kleist [“On the gradual formation of thoughts in the process of speech”], near random conversations, from a philosophical pov, the competent man can’t change a paradigm, but nobody’s ever thought of this, a German romantic, a book setsup expectations, subverts expectations, breaking its own rules, the worst rule that this book broke, that’s a deforming balloon of a spaceship, to trick other spaceships, but they’re building them, it still works as a title, matter transporters, public transportation, forgive the setup, this book is trying to be political, knock this out of the park, We, ultimately if every planet in the milky way galaxy has an evil dictatorship to get girls, let’s kill all the men, that does sort of fit the origin through pulp magazine route, comparing to Blake’s 7, anarchistic criminals, unconvinced of what the right thing to do is, the liberator, liberate the galaxy, soma, framed with pedophilia charges, brainwashing, ends in noir, betrayed and destroyed, there was no next season, cultivate some garden, get some kids, get off the pill, really sleep with you, a horny book solution to the problem of men wanting to hoard women, he doesn’t have the intellectual heft, quite interesting for five pages, Michel Foucault, great idea, we just cut your access, social credit in the popular news, cut your access to your bank account, can’t travel, used or sketched out, he couldn’t follow through with that, space opera fantasy with a few dollops of science, the electron telescope, he’s not perfect, it plays a lot like hard sf in a lot of places, hafnium is a real element, if we wear it on our wrists, plutonium, a secret until 1948, somebody’s fucked up, a secretive process, anybody can make it, in 1946?, pretty impressive, a plutonium planet, a good description, Ringworld, bluffs to get to places, make comments, women and men and lions and sheep, this is an analogy for guns, Americans often have a positive relationship with their guns, varmints, disciplining natives, reasons for having guns, if a mass uprising, if you are a state with nuclear weapons you don’t get invaded, if you are a state without nuclear weapons, Ukraine: no nuclear weapons, North Korea: nuclear weapons, things would be different, more dangerous to break into a gun house, bluffing, creating uncertainty, South Africa gave theirs up, France, the US and Russia, thousands each, how many does it take, really?, if we live in a society with the disciplinary circuit wired into their brains, fucked by the police, this is not new, a strong sense of ambivalence towards a monopoly on violence, this disciplinary circuit idea, to make everybody conform, shepherded to that path, from a Jesse pov, wool over their eyes, so cowed, fun with the radio, a most noble lineage, it’s good that we have this king that’s going to come in and save us, let’s rebel for a bit, guys who don’t ever get a name, frontiersman, bearskin cap, standing realm, sketched out stuff, that’s why it sucks, the promise of the premise is awesome, we all have to have guns in our houses to threaten the government, Jesse would like this book, free society, people from Ades, Jesse-like, every man for himself, every man as himself, voluntary, government but not really, worried about the economic system, didn’t care, above it, what is Kim?, a man who knows a lot about science, skilled tradesman, a technician, a reader really interested in things, extrapolate things out of a text that aren’t there, more destructive to give beginning readers texts like this, not as much here, of two minds about it, philosophically interesting, a point to be made, a free society, only so much they’re willing to do to protect other people, a technical fix, when Donna gives the metaphors about the scoop, a pile of grains, sparked, makes this book have a shape, I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing this for everyone, Jonathan Maberry acting wrong, bad for everyone else, encouraged by the economic system, H.P. Lovecraft is weaponizing his IP, generously sharing that, entirely being out of copyright, that kind of thinking, so deep into the capitalist system, exploitable and exploited, it should have been just the first story, tempted to continue, Leinster pronounced LINSTER, not even his real name, discriminating against him, such a workhorse, stuff from the 20s to the 60s, 1918, The Mad Planet, his skyscraper story, deeper, despite the flaws, it was Arthur C. Clarke-like, mind blown, a smear all over the sidewalk, in the way that Olaf Stapledon would do, zeroed in on very specific, the last city on earth, what people are like now, all about art, random algorithms, fully born, out of existence when they become bored with their art, a non-conformist, he’s strange, no families, emitted from a computer, doing science fiction ahead of where the system was, the disciplinary circuit is coming guys, by other means, the stupid brute route, Elon Musk brain chip, 5g brain chip, seeing a change in students, a ticktock video, she did a final, bored or boring, pretty competent, skibidi toilet, a short vide, riz isn’t even hard, neologism, what?, No!, rejected!, we’re having trouble making sentences now, ask Phil Chenevert, human headed toilets, electronic devices for heads, sounds like art, if David Lynch made with the series, heiling Hitler every five seconds, they’re indoctrinated by memes, talking to the chat, hey chat do you agree with this, hilarious but worrisome, youtube and twitch are corporate, reading long things, new things develop, not fighting against the corporate control, whole youtube channels and twitchstreams are deleted, skibitoileting themselves into a prison, negative reinforcement, locked in your apartment, locked out of your clothing receptacles, positive and negative reinforcement, the internet, it’s not the internet, done the other way around, this is a thing we want to push, fund channels, we don’t like this, delete things, being shadowbanned, being delisted, the circuit causes pain, dopamine, how the internet traps people, animal videos to Miassa and Will, what they do the sender, Jesse did good, a problem with the whole system of government, incentive, that’s what ideology is for, harnessed to a mule, the planet Kim escapes from, believes in it, planets where everybody gets 1000 women, no more free than the ones being subjugated, what’s the difference, touch on the radio drama, he’s making another point, relationship, sketched out, I appreciate you, why didn’t you come get me, he hears a radio drama, weird, strange, pretending men never existed, obsessed with this idea, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s Herland, art, drill down, art shit, trans lady is talking about her 9-5 job, transcribing the sentence, this is art, an hour and half, buying a nice mouse on amazon is the way you stave off depression, that’s art!, Brass Bra is a thing, there’s another one, maybe see something come out of it, tropes or habits, life in Athens, the plays of Aristophanes, musicals based on movies, insight into that world from so long ago, pretending men don’t exist, still wearing veils, what are you gonna do with this, how disappointed Jesse was, prolific writer thing, just whipped em off, 300 million inhabited worlds, nothing was different about any of them, The Mad Planet, humans have involved into lesser creatures, also there’s mushrooms, bye, strange or strangely, what makes weird fiction good, the wikipedia entry on plutonium, wartime secrecy, a weird element, lots of different forms, strange qualities, Pauos 3, no atmosphere, worked five thousand years, plutonium mines, how plutonium on earth is still around, the relic of a relic of a relic, every time you hit that half-life, decays and decays, a whole planet made of plutonium?, it doesn’t make any sense, the big problem with this book, written to be a gee whiz space opera story, a Thrilling Wonder Stories problem, a pulp magazine question, should I just put up the Disciplinary circuit, Jesse can’t decide what’s good for people, they won’t understand, voiced their concern, lampshaded, there’s a problem in this story, now I like it, 3 hours into our discussion, shine a light on it, hypocraphl?, about Bewitched, apocryphal, Dick Sargent Dick York, I Dream Of Jeannie, the wrong husband, you look different, a new haircut?, aren’t bewitched and I dream Of Jeannie the exact same show, Bell, Book And Candle, Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, the problems are the same, there’s a mother in law and the wife can do anything, the costumes, one’s in the airforce, a businessman, hijinks, his wife is a succubus or whatever, a djinn, dark eyed houri, mind drifting away, killing all of the men on the planet, a bigger version of what happens in world history, is Murray Leinster anybody’s favourite science fiction writer?, how well read, how competent he is, interesting again, whole first third, gold, a really good story, what are we gonna do about this thing, Prison Break, they broke out of prison, a popular show, had to go on, on the run, Lost but more competently handled, tattoos all over his body, they knew it was gold, they had no plan, that kind of storytelling is ultimately bad, forgettable fluff, we have to be better than that, when we liked the Fall Guy (2024), Cry Macho (2014), nice old fashioned slow paced storytelling, the least plausible part, how enfeebled he is, a skeleton, still a good actor, he’s too old, Jersey Boys (2014), that’s impressive, in charge, in control, attentive to every single detail, majorly talented, good if not great, a boy and his chicken, his rooster, some meanness, so much heart, based on a novel based on a script, Arnold Schwarzenegger, clearly not him riding the horse, die soon, tributes, is there a guy who’s bigger for longer, Francis Ford Coppola, spaghetti western man, TV show guy, any which way but loose, Woody Allen, canceled himself, Polanski scandal, nobody denies it, the received opinions or facts, starting to doubt, was the president of El Salvador, commenting on the fashion, science fictiony clothing, didn’t even recognize the flag, Biden administration not as offended, cracked down on gangs, all male population in prison, 78,000 people, 6.5 million, 3 million men, gang age people, proved a point, the guys standing behind, brothers, sticky-out ears, related to each other, we can work together, uh-oh, 2% of the entire population, what’s the percentage for Canada, the UK, the USA, China, Moon over Parador (1988), the same plot as Dave, Sigourney Weaver, the good Kevin, liked grabbing men’s crotches, just twinks?, insult word?, Jesse said “twink”, a funny word, manic pixie dream girl, the girl from that comic, Scott Pilgrim, Elizabeth Town, Zoe Daschanelle, Katharine Hepburn from Bringing Up Baby, gay slang, every boy bang from Korea, twinkie, twinkle, Richard Dreyfuss is asked to double a president, central america, evil dictator, fake Spanish accent, Raul Julia is his advisor, Teri Garr?!, Sonia Braga, Brazilian, Caviar For His Excellency by Charles G. Booth, Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper, a latin dictatorship, whitehouse competency porn, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley, Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, 2016, extra homework, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, an earlier precursor, the little girl who’s the grandaughter of the cafe owner, restaurant, tamale place, randomly deaf, every part of that movie is well put together, every person who has screen time, solidly put together, masculine tenderness, cowboys, a very elderly mountain man, as a person from Alberta, a signed book, real genuine people who are not horrible, lucky, Memoirs Of A Mountain Man by Andy Russell, 1984, sleeping in a teepee, smoking a pipe, wearing his cowboy stuff, Will hasn’t taken up the pipe yet, hasn’t taken up the scanner, the tools of the trade, tools of a Kentucky mountain man, one good cowboy hat, a little too good, paid too much money for it, a dress cowboy hat, 2009 priorities, a relic from an earlier period, a range romance, regular western book, Will could do it, Rangeland Romances, he’s ketchup she’s mustard, an idiosyncratic, less sensational, the colour, red shirts, a red shirt, a classic science fiction, The Ship Who Sang is public domain, Anne McCaffrey, and Terence is no longer with us, on internet archive, very short, it’ll make you cry, going to a high tea, bring your pipe and your scanner, anything interesting to say?, really solid, Paul was really down on it being public domain, really good, an SFFaudio drinking game, one of the drinks is when Jesse mentions Paul, drinking games are bad, a Raymond Chandler novel, every time Philip Marlowe takes a drink, expanded into a fixup, then a seven novel series, here’s a hint, this story is a juvenile, why the ship who sang is public domain, April 1961, no such filing exists, a photo, note in 1989 there was no renewal, new matter, expansion and notes, a renewal for the fixup, a fatal flaw?, mistated the year, somebody got the wrong magazine but the right year, an attempt at a renewal, a mistake shouldn’t be punished, scrivener error vs. deliberate fraud, the caveat here, would you like some legal advice?, don’t talk to the cops, life advice, also don’t talk to the reporters, repeat 1 thing, longer than 2 words they’ll take it out of contest, Robert Silverberg story, Stellar Audio, Sundance by Robert Silverberg, corporation from earth, mental problems, sentient aliens, rebels against the company, native american?, navajo, well documented, still around, beothuk code talkers, they’re extinct, are their any beothuk left?, one guy or lady is dying, the last beothuk speaker, to tell you your wrong, how is the name pronounced in English, first decade of the 19th century, Shanawdithit, transferred people, moved around Nova Scotians, moved around New Brunswick’s stories, Viking’s Dawn, The Road To Miklagard, Viking Sunset [by Henry Treece], from the illustrations, fun names then they get killed, Eric Brighteyes, really, sophisticated lady, she’s a witch, a high falutin language, H. Rider Haggard, resident expert, 10 or 11 books by him, She, King Solomon’s Mines, Ayesha, 1885, LibriVox, John Nicholson, 10 hour book, when Maissa’s gone, he writes long, The Aeneid, a non-public domain version, August 4th, known to be flaky, The Green Girl?, The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, first Princess of Mars pastiche, Frank R. Paul, brings modern tech to King Arthur’s court, a meditator on Earth, falls in love with a princess, renaissance era society, in the body of a dead guy, plotters against her, makes all the modern weapons, powerful merchant prince type dude, ends on kinda cliffhanger, Palos Of The Dog Star Pack, by juicy?, J.U. Giesy, will is super flakey, somewhat flakey, Will gets cancelled all the time, Cora has parents dying, The Cave Girl, question marks, struck through, transfixed by this stick, judgements made upon me, you’ve got a super flakey crust, dandruff shampoo is probably bad for you, it would smell strange and probably, favourite kind of pie, pecan pie, hard questions, blackberry pie, a bold choice, strawberry rhubarb, when you buy the ingredients for you pie, cheese pie, ricotta, a meat pie, eggs and sugar, saying goodbye, bye on the pie, a chess pie, a transparent pie, just sugar and eggs, the people of this region, healthy choices, taking up the pie, sugar pie, what else is it tho?, all pies, fruit pies, prone to make rhubarb pies, adds strawberries, rhubarb is a little strong, black currant, banned in the United States, the plant had a rust or something that effected some other plant, banned for 7 decades?, a major flavour, fruit markets, a lovely thing, when in Britain, red currant, life without black currant would be horrible, go to planet and black currant won’t grow there, second galaxy, with all the planets out there, some nice natives veggies, only marginally habitable, some fungus growin on the grown, barely wanted to move, everything makes Will think about Jesse, sort of a stalker affect, people thinking about Jesse on other continents, seems dangerous, interested in Kentucky, Appalachian Aesthetic, abandoned buildings, rustic ruins, Michigan doesn’t seem interesting, with regard to the upper peninsula, Kansas has The Wizard Of Oz, make a list of states that frighten you, frightened by cold western provinces, cost of living, a shipping container, full size, a window, drywall inside, when am I moving in, there’s no toilet in there, container life, not much of a thing, #VanLife, so sad, the roman villas, central courtyard, indoor place safe from bears, bears in British Columbia, black bears, spirit bears, a black bear that’s white, a genetic advantage, white foam, a hypothesis, Kermode bear, they’re not albino, cinnamon bear, Anmore, rainforest, berries, garbage, salmon, where is the most wild places, Antarctica, Kamchatka, about as wild or more wild, mountains, small, elderly mountains, Eastwood mountains, very remote from commerce, the way the roads are built, cut the tops of many of the mountains, doesn’t have access to the interstate system, railroads, what fucked up Kentucky?, coal takes everything away and gives nothing back, any other commodity, demand and value, European levels of labour militancy, pitched battles with company agents, a bomb dropped by the police, probably not from airplanes, hey look the BC government isn’t completely incompetent, renewable resource, on crown land, revenue goes to the province, taxing corporate extraction, control the resource, stopped listening to CBC, getting angry, one of the worst feelings a person can have, in Italian or Russian, Ford bros., she’s muted, asshole of the East, highways through forests, land that’s supposed to be protected, stopped taxing, for votes, hiring his friends, big for profit, detrimental on the land from which we live, Moraine Lands, re-elected premiere, his brother was, PC, Progressive Conservative, hybrid names, we’ll have it both ways, we’re the forward looking conservatives, when the brother died, was it really scandalous tho?, guy likes crack, when a rich person is using crack, people are saying Zelenskyy’s on regular cocaine, BC is surprisingly competent, getting very cynical about politics, Enbridge, B.C. Hydro, a free air conditioner, that’s a good thing, not killing them is better, build up to not killing them, the invisible hand in the velvet hand in the iron glove, for the shortest time, Rachael Notley, Social Credit, the Liberals are the business party, municipal party politics, they can’t really do anything against dog, provinces have tons of control over municipalities, the suburbs put them in there, $1 beer?, steamroller, candy, these things flow from that, they can never win federally, reverse engineer a political party, CCF, put a finger on, the United States controls Canada, a tepid party, why can’t other provinces get their shit together, New Brunswick is run by the McCain family, Idaho, Canadaland, not going to talk about Gaza, this is violence against my people, indefensible zionist shit, local newspapers, they suck, gotten worse, death spiral, no longer using dating apps, copping to eating a mountain of antidepressants, that is not a newspaper article, not paid much, brand his column the first ever Weird Tales dating column, very endy timesy energy, not directly involved, that Haiti thing, convinced the Kenyans, when the US dollar goes, what’s that going to do to the fake Canadian money?, gold guy, under the container, the skibidi gold toilet, scared of skibidi toilet, willing to embrace it, the thing to embrace by the young, past the point of existential despair and are enjoying their time, school is basically optional, what’s the point of this, there’s no future for me anyway, debilitating despair, in Greece for a month, fuck it all, why not forever?, still got to make some money, to pay the rent, with the land reform bill, fabricating Kalashnikovs, Temu, Aliexpress, off brand Lego, that exists, realistic masks, once you click on a realistic masks…, a mask of somebody’s fist with a middle finger raised, your head is a giant fist with the middle finger raised, hang loose, the final face for the apocalypse, the V for Vendetta mask, the mask is the true face, circling the drain as the ship sinks, you have to hang out with a teenager, 9 year olds too, Reddit is a horrible place, super controlled, the moderation is evil, my little brother, how do I do this?, raging on meme video, make the system happen, the kid is culture jamming him, skibidi doesn’t mean anything, toilets are allowed, boobs and penises aren’t allowed, tweak the system, maybe it’s going to bring the whole thing down, freedom stones, a nonsense phrase, not the the future Jack London envisioned, load your runcible plastic like this, a way to go, what will the revolution look like afterwards, pamphlets, owning the non-communists?, NPC style memes, you crying bro?, impossible to save them, China putting the last emperor to work with a broom, when being invaded, trying to reverse the revolution, you have to do something, an anecdote, Toussaint Louverture, Haitian revolution, German mercenaries were deemed black, the slaves are revolting, kill all the white european colonizers, recognized as black in the Haitian constitution, quaker dwarf, Barbados, Dominican Republic, admin, to the DR on the DL, St. Lucia, Cuba, Jamaica, California or Mexico, rah rah rah thing every year, have to go also get to go, mandatory work thing, oh yuck, when they filmed Sorcerer in 1977, Rafael Trujillo, Toronto too, for the Caribbean, a little man with big ideas, dwarf wife, a little bit older than him, lives in a cave, vegetarian, abolitionist, Stephen Leacock, she makes her own clothes, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins by Stephen Leacock, one of our best, a big deal, a humorist, like the Canadian Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, described as a parable, this saw needs to be filed up a bit, fix the grindstone, make a carpenter’s bench, that Carl Sagan thing, James Burke’s Connections, still alive, very interesting, go into a fugue state, kings and contest, he was working on that other project, learned everything and nothing, The Trigger Effect, no excuses, if you watch it on Brave, the power blackout of 1965, the invention of the plow, five or six shows like that, PBS, TV Ontario, interviewed by Dan Carlin, a history guy, the biggest podcaster, Scott Miller, Joe Rogan, Lost-Sci Podcast, he lives in Costa Rica, his wife is Costa Rican, just reads them, TV broadcaster, his dad, still doing a show, very good audiobook narrator, some of the popular people, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, little 30 minute story, its great, about the ads, A Cast, uber for kids, you can hire people on linkedin, health insurance for poor people, different ads, generic corporations, ads for other podcasts, audio dramas, its gonna die, podcasting networks, never launched?, never happened, Stitcher, defunct August 2023, what led to its downfall, youtube controlls what goes on youtube, u controll what goes on your podcatcher, provide the hosting services?, the business of podcasting vs. podcasting, podcast network, remember Night Vale?, headgum, CBC radio, BBC, Al Jazeera, Earwolf, preserve having a job, let’s do a podcast, for HQ, sales network, there’s nowhere that isn’t podcasting now, TWiT, 14 shows hosted on the network, this week in whatever, thousands of episodes, Jerry Pournelle, this week in security, so weird, almost four hours now, the day slips away, time slips away, [Maissa slips away], The Not-World, Cirsova’s not available, #Sad, even if assassinating bad presidents, the anarchists tried that, [William] McKinley, propaganda of the deed, made sense in Imperial Russia, a competent manager, a condo, want to complain? have you tried volunteering, so fuckin boring, outsource this to Colossus, the colony organizer, the bearskinned mayor, the guy in the second galaxy, dishevelmed woman, jealous of Dona’s appearance (and man), weird reactions, mad for no reason, president of the woman planet, in charge, clothes are mussed up, disorganized shelves, can you be shevelled?, old French, about your horse?, about your hair, hair uncovered, hence disorder, kempt and shelved and my shelves are very scruffy, helping the children?, volume 4 of the Nancy Drew books, Hardy Boys, two sets of Nancy Drew, what a deal, need that fore Heinlein, Glory Road, age appropriate?, he’s a Vietnam vet, have sword will travel, Paul had problems with it too, nope out of it, some scene that happens, rape scene?, why do people not like Glory Road?, sexist piece of shit, trite, some classic fantasy, Stranger In A Strange Land, boring, painful, this stinker, starts on a nude beach in France, meets a fairy or elf princess, a dwarf hires him, an alternative universe, so PTSD he’s down a rabbit hole, Silverberg’s an interesting guy, which of my eras do you want to talk about first, a healthy sense of himself, robust, stay humble, doing pretty good, he could die and still be doing pretty good, he’s in his 80s, very 80s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1969, The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim, Margaret St. Clair, talk about the underdogs, a kleenex that gets sneezed on, dropped behind a radiator, gets sentient then gets revenge, all over the board, wants to exist, succeed for a while, It would have been all right if Spring had never come, thrifty and not too clean, March is a tricky month, last November, like Frankestein but with a rag, nice and short, making some time to finishing the Damon Knight Futurians book, what Donald A. Wollheim was like, bosom chum, John Michel, young communist league, stuttered horribly, what does stuttering mean?, everybody studies sometimes, Eric Idle, John Cleese, for laughs, a voice like thin paper, not thick paper, grok it out, weren’t robust in certain ways, John Milius is robust, does a robust man need a gun?, if own a gun, big collectors, very interesting technology, very important, you can’t dismiss it away, what Mao said about guns, all political power flows the barrel of a gun, group of enough people rebelling against the circuit, the cleverness of individuals, special attractive and brainy and useful wives, you’re too useful, trying to compliment her, chosen the wrong word, your ability to have guns, ability to read the situation politically, gain guns, print em up, machine shop, the Sino Soviet split was a bad mistake, caused the caused, what caused the end of the Soviets, bad read, the beneficiaries of the system stopped belieiving in it, thought they could do personally better as capitalists, kleptocrats, decadent, didn’t happen to China, China was nimble, Poe is alive, age corruption is not sound, elderly but fine, the age of the country, Canada is youngerthan the United States, a whole bunch of different dates, when did British colonization begin, 1775, 1776, 1780?, a moving target, pretend Canada is a little younger, we’ll be as corrupt, as big, as much, politics in Quebec, very very corrupt, Yukon, not so corrupt, as old as Ontario in a certain sense, younger in another sense, Australia, drill down, what corruption is, works how it is supposed to, the federalist papers, not supposed to change, supposed to stay the same together, demarcation line, rhymes back in time, Poe, vote rigging, 1840s, setup to be corrupt, 2/3rds of a man, heady words, some claims made, rapidly decline, Paul doesn’t think the Businessman’s Plot was real, Roosevelt was allowed to continue in office, massive popular support against his enemies, the NRA, fireside chats, threaten his enemies trying to overturn his rule, personal corruption in John A. MacDonald, not fake news, not even playing the game anymore, is Trump a political prisoner now?, walked away, smiled, too ridiculous to answer?, is it a ridiculous question, all prisoners are political, that deep, put someone in jail, seems unlikely, trying to annoy him, death by 1000 cuts, he’s invincible, visceral anti-corruption, not in the way that everybody else is, come back, they dont seem to be doing the assasination thing on him [this podcast recorded June 2, 2024], the murder industry, holding back weapons from Ukraine was a sin, somebody’s got to get his bread buttered, elites, deep political conflict with Russia forever, competent leadership on the other ends, accidents that happen, pumping the money out of the US government into the hands of the people controlling, dissatisfaction, Trump’s base, transitioning, they them gendered, an activity, they’re feeling it too, they don’t know what to do with it either, a certain level of corruption, faith, for the system to go on, Jonathan was on to something, people hate each other now, divide your enemies, divide your subject, opposed to the military industrial complex, ending foreign wars, reduce military spending, the Trump coalition, whoever supports trump, didn’t start any new wars, more strident supporters, Galaxy not Astounding, this is garbage to me, H.L. Gold, so silly, a military guy, blames Joe Biden for leaving Afghanistan, hemmed in by traditional beliefs, he reads the wind, more than anything, being popular is more important, he actually makes decisions, up close and personal, its different here, liberals more insufferable, “lefties”, conservatives, don’t put any thought into it, that’s bad, bad takes, hate Trump because they see himself in him, projection, he has tiny hands, Donny tiny hands, not even true, not freakishly small or large, a reference to him having a small penis, fat and weak, okay to body shame that guy, slightly orange coloured, not enough, badly cut suits?, a unique style, hair is on backwards, reverse stapled on, Biden’s bald, the part that never goes bald and move that to the top, rogaine that fails out, a weird appearance, accusing him of what he’s going to do in the future (that you’re doing now), fun to think about, denying something that’s wrong with you, a baby low level way of dealing with problems, drinking game players, feel comfortable, Paul doesn’t really listen to the podcast, people that I lie to, a thing about the middle names of people, only people he doesn’t like, middle names are funny, doesn’t have one?, Catholic, non-solid memory, Donald John Trump, 45, presidential number, Biden just gets one, Obama only gets one number back to 45 again?, Grover Cleveland, I heart New York, 34 counts guilty, the New Republic, insurrection and national security, stunning guilty verdict shatters his aura of invincibility, not stunning nor shattering, won an election, lost an election, is this invincible, masturbation for the people who hate Trump, alleged crimes, they didn’t bring again any guns, “storm”, Trump fans, show their grievance, verbed in the capital, agent provocateurs, an organized tour, theft of national security documents, even if he gave it to China without any personal profit, the deep state is not legally in charge it is just actually in charge, bad at filing stuff, like Hilary’s emails, deleting her emails, private server, hide her horrible emails, an extremely serious offense lurks beneath, he’s invested in it, The Terminal Man, made a mistake, Matt Yglesias retweet, the Civilization VI equivalent, he likes games, he’s getting gamed, viscerally triggering, he let his guys do that, he can’t be shamed, when Will was a kid, serious religious thing, lost to Obama, tricked, options on the table for most people, Obama or John McCain, that’s the trick, shoulda voted McCain, not a wise man, Obama at least was smart, too smart for all our goods, smart for his good, compromise his way through, a horrible thing, that’s the horror, willing to do things you shouldn’t do, I am what I am, not how the sizzle was sold, hope, stay on your parent’s health insurance until 26, so hot to talk about health care, Bernie Sanders noise, medicare for all, not perfect, not like what they’re saying, you get cancer, you get treatment, waiting list, its free, literally and actually free, the CRT television, the wifi’s free, not enough doctors, walk-in clinics, pharmacists can give your drugs directly, tryna solve problems, election coming up, debate about health care gone, only about Trump, killing in Gaza, horrible videos, Paul is a nice person, not willing to be mean, the national security question, a lot of deference going on, you don’t need a zap of punishment of pleasure, against leadership, management is not leadership, being the quartermaster, disbursing takes, let me finish, I did, Terence doesn’t talk enough, good at talking, this projection idea, look into the shadow work, what was sad about the conviction, how excited people got, pathetic, 34 counts how do you feel?, is it going to stop him from being president again?, don’t cut deep with Will’s mother, different relationship, much more sympathetic to people transing, trying to be nice to people, are they not wrong?, too nice to Jesse about, weirdly preoccupied, what is Jesse projecting, want some boobs, grow boobs on your own, are these boobs good enough, very interested in trans stuff, Day Million, Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil, one ought to be interested, important, its bigger than other such things, more controlling, more of an earworm, Blondie songs, running around inside your head, saying Blondie stuff, Heart Of Glass, Blondie is the band, Michael Jackson was very big an effected people’s dress, crazy to think about, Elvis, behavior at concerts, more correct, Elvis upset some people, because of hip movements, hormones to look like Elvis, its important, its happening and non-reversible, tattoo vs. cut off parts and hormones, haircut is very easy to reverse, give it some time, those boobs aren’t going to grow buck, people don’t know what they’re getting into, problems caused by brains, input output, hormones in your body, data input, an error, consider chemically composed, put chemicals into your brain to change it, jungian, kids are very subject to being not unpopular, isolated and made freaks, in school, yes, the Korean kids have this thing going on from home, they generally go along with it, top down influence, wishy washy, you should do good things and not do bad things, opinions or facts, hang out with some people and see what’s going on, hangs with them, patients or clients, the trans phenomenon, similar views, very wrong, only know so much, in general terms, clients who are trans, different, cultural and religious ferment, student coming, a book by Barret Brown coming out, American journalist and essayist, snarky in trouble with the government, arrested by the FBI for threatening the FBI, in prison for 63 months, reporting on Anonymous, against the US government, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous, heroin addiction, 2011, Barrett Brown, transparency movement, clever and hilarious, institutions are made of people, entertaining and illuminating manual, CPTSD, fucked around with, nice relationship with his mom, harassing his mom, not many people know who he is, Scott has a podcast with Julie, to be continued on the hormone conversation, coffee, talking point, don’t care about the truth, only about winning, some rhetoric and some sophistry, ad campaign, what does Will have to gain?, chopping our children’s dicks off, oppo research, have a good time.

The Last Space by Murray Leinster

The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster - GALAXY NOVEL 25

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings and In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings (read by Mike Vendetti, 55 minutes) AND In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl (read by Edmund Bloxam, 52 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 48 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
[Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings – from Terror Tales, May 1938 and In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931] that narrator, LibriVox, like to not listen, performing, distracting, a noble effort, everbodys got an accent, Trois-Rivières, a cultural, 30 years watching news reports, CBC generally gets its pronunciation right, the main character is an American, the half-breed Indian, Beaumont, a New York lawyer, take it too far, way too far, two miles from Manhattan, US states, the geography is so bad, giant book showing different continents, they don’t even know where they are on the map, maybe geography is a useless thing, from one tube enclosure to another tube enclosure, maybe it doesn’t matter, you need to understand geography in order to understand anything, a geology a little bit, from the Libertarian convention, use its military to defend itself, from what?, giant moat on either side, defending Hawaii, you don’t need a sixth fleet in the Indian Ocean, Nevada, Oregon, accents?, more than accent, Iraq, Iran, hearing about it on the news, the correct pronunciation, say it in Spanish, all these tourists, east coast politicians, it doesn’t need to be set in the orbit of Saturn, not as good as the other Starzl, E.E. Doc Smith, more compact, starts deep into the action, we’re in the middle of a battle, holding cells, dialogue happens, we’re done, fairly good for being fairly bad, published in the October 1931 issue of Astounding, the Clayton era of Astounding, having trouble following the action, put on a really big smile for your videos, the muscles of your face, practicing to be the joker, he’s really selling this, in seven months we’ll know if it was all worth it, Sword & Scandal, with that great art, very solid, character names, Quarl Finner?, Coerl?, Black Destroyer, Braniac Five from the Legion Of Superheroes, Lenore, character from Poe, Moby Gore, Lt. Burroughs, Captain Strom, he’s not shy, Mark Twain, a newspaperman, family newspaper in some midwestern town, its good, real things that happens, engaging with real stuff a little bit, her brother dies, dies from pneumonia, daughter of a capitalist, a capitalism in space story, the eugenics pirate, a good noble man, a man without a planet, engaging with the materials of the times, the Burroughs thing, make it about Romance, he doesn’t solve it, the IFP, the interplanetary flying police?, pirates infiltrated by east Indian company agent, sexy redhead pirate queen, a depth to it, for how short it is, a lot of time hating, too simple, a super good example of pulp that doesn’t suck completely, not enough beams, a cloaking device, I’ll parole you, new laser beam, ray of some kind, a little ethical back and forth, working for the fuckin cops, tremendous amounts of concentrated energy, the energy becomes sentient, weird juice, for the amount of plot and backstory, something in a series, ISFDB, seven of these stories, The Earthman’s Burden, very depthy, another Starzl story, Madness Of The Dust, he’s on mars, he has martian slaves, martian dust makes him go crazy, Against All Flags (1952), Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, off the coast of Madagascar, a political dissident, party now because there is no afterlife, mythological pirates, historical pirates, crook, of the golden age of piracy, still pirates today, the Horn of Africa, not British naval slaves, their backstory is different, a really good movie, the Mad Max novelization, Stone (1974), Satan worshipers, very beautiful, very artistic, by looking at pirates, land pirates, living life free from societal law, Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, patch him in and patch him out, harassing ransom people, Pirates Of Venus pirates are not really pirates, Gully Foyle, Alfred Bester, a positive spin, write the pants off, very early in the history of magazines, by the early 30s Weird Tales is getting good, Science Fiction isn’t as mature, willing to pay relatively good rates, the writing of both of this, Ray Cumming fuckin sucks, The Girl In The Golden Atom, this is a fun story, Cat-Woman, flies by the seat of his pants, bad stuff in here, as a relatively short weird menace, shudder story, so similar much better idea, serums that transform you, a lot hornier, more idea filled, Sam Moskowitz on Ray Cummings, went downhill, never evolved to keep up with the times, formulaic, 1938, Ambrose Bierce, this genre didn’t exist, a story about glands, the science of glands, 1910s and 20s, the gland doctor in France, put this in a novel, mad scientist in France, a cutting from testicle from a young monkey, Bobby Derie’s blog, wealthiest men in Paris, complete nonsense, great scientist, have they retracted the story yet, the little touches, there was a magazine, that magazine had the formula, I never found that magazine, maybe she is a cat-woman, very meta, lurid covers, ladies being tortured, fed into machines, when they get nude, delivers on all fronts, exotic northern Quebec setting, palpitating breasts, her heart is beating so hard it makes her breasts beat, palpitations, am I fighting a drug or am I really sleepy?, can see out, writhe around on the animal skin rugs, jumps out the window, bad planning, four characters in this story, made no sense, masturbating in the corner while she dances around on the rugs, terrible plotting, terrible, horrible, a grindhouse 42nd street horror movie, very entertaining and over the top, entertained, trouble visualizing, so very visual, a floorplan of the cabin in the woods, needed to be in the same room as her, wakes up, girl dancing around, a big mirror thing, now that she’s my wife, she looks in the mirror, saw him as a cat, then a literal cat shows up, why does it have a baby in its mouth?, unburied baby?, the cat after all, badly put together, was fixing this story worth Ray Cummings’ time, pulp fiction factoids, Frederik Pohl, bulldoze Pohl, wearing a cravat, almost unusable stories, your standard pulp author didn’t write a second draft, after editorial notes or revisions, how Weird Tales worked, make some changes, I like money, I will not accept payment, my words are perfect, something in common, Lovecraft needed money, scrip harder, he wouldn’t work, he couldn’t work, rich as a child, grandfather was wealthy, wife taking care of him, sending cheques, artists need to be supported, inheritance money, residual stuff, lived with his aunts, rent and food was cheap, three suits, not buying a lot of stuff, editorial revision business, Edison’s laboratory assistant, Edison’s philosophy, Thomas Edison, mix these chemicals together, shrink ourselves down, looking through a microscope at a piece of gold, become very small, just a matter of looking in your cupboards until you find the right chemical, great men before corporate, Elon Musk, emerald mine, get a bunch of guys working for you, a patent troll, Musk isn’t as a bad, E.E. Doc Smith, invented powdered sugar, manufactured it industrially, revised it, space opera, doesn’t need to be set near Titan, a tour of the solar system, protect the whole solar system, as an ideas man, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, covered in mirages, fun, stupid, fun, from the text, forays to the faraway undisciplined Pluto, colonial thing, tropical Venus, Aryl, stupendous and neverending mirages, Jesse’s Paul hat, his anti-Paul hat, mining anything near Saturn, too fuckn cold, nuclear power all the time, radiation, make it into heat, energon cubes make no fuckn sense, purple, pinky purple, I eat energon cubes, to sell cars that transform into robots, disguises, you think I’m just a boring, my uncle was in the Navy, a mcguffin to chase after, if Jack London had written this story it would be way better, lab assistant, Wells was the lab assistant to Huxley, learning shit, science teacher, The Star by H.G. Wells, Goliah, a device that zap people out of existence, blackmail the capitalists into obeying him, you don’t need it to be set around Titan, wanting to change reality using his tech, more science fictional, when E.E. Doc Smith solves problems, we can’t restart the warp engines cold, the mechanism of the plot, somehow do the thing that is impossible, during the battle they invent technology, Borg shit is fake science fiction, nothing real and tangible, to engage in a new relationship with reality, bad science fiction vs. fake science fiction, pretty different, what makes something a western?, Outland (1981), sean connery in space, High Noon (1952) in space, a western in space, is this story science fiction?, just cuz the guy wants to do eugenics, the invisibility shield, small details, invented from not used, prevents them from having an incident, we have nuclear weapons in our cargo hold, had them, didn’t use them, the combination, trying to change the world, bad at his job, a plan to do so, a new race of humans, rich, capitalist, large mine holdings on Titan, visiting dilettante, hostages for money?, science fiction but not good science fiction, the gland formula, moving the goal posts, weird fiction possibly by science fiction, werewoman, also possibly, the narrator turns into a cat, it could be it was a science fiction, I lost the documents, undercutting it on purpose, read the end, secret formula in a published magazine, Frozen Canyon, Jeanne and I, glorious vibrant young body that nature gave her, she is normal, a scheming criminal half mad with lust, had never seen the French magazine she mentioned, there was no such magazine, the product of a deranged mind, she disrobes, gazing at her beauty in her bedroom mirror, the grinding maw, for you see sometimes a strange lethargy, cat naps, gleaming green and yellow, my mind is tottering, the watchful eyes upon, like a cat watches a mouse, the ambiguity, doesn’t impact the rest of the book, is there any supernatural activity in this story, half-breed French Canadian in the north, Franklin’s motivation, wait until she gets her money, gotta see her naked, you can’t wait five minutes to see her dance nakedly, nice and ambiguous ending, are we reading a diary entry?, if you go back early enough in the story, undercuts his whole story, if we drank milk we’d all be like cows, the doppleganger one, real science fiction, Mike Vendetti narrated, what supernatural thing happened? what scientific thing happened?, dosing with something apparently, spanish fly, masturbation talk, to perform for her guardian, doesn’t deliver, buy your thesis, precluded from science fiction, breed a new race?, white man’s law, given the period, philosophers have said, atavistic, ray weapon, primitive urge, the great simians who he resembled, a south seas story can be science fiction, Island Of Dr. Moreau, A Thousand Deaths, dogs and disintegration, The Monster Men, amnesia, therefore worthy of the daughter of the scientist, memory returned to Quarl, orderly procession of the stars, the artificial gravity, very early, pre-Heinlein, very interesting, as the ship rotated, a thick swathing of bandages, peaked face, rotten, a portable apparatus, progenitor, this will work, an agreeable warmth, a great lassitude followed, filled the blouse, tunic, blue trousers, gold braid down the side, clothing talk, one of the chosen, the chosen race, an out and out damned pirate, what else?, inscrutably melancholy, the idealism of a poet, many means, disguise one’s purpose, for instance, felt himself redden, Strom was a zealot, prompt penetration, the point is he wants him to join the team, breeding a new race, takes generations, Hitler’s plans, it won’t work, the fiction part, because it was real, trying to do something science fictional, before Hitler, not running his race programs, everybody loved it, homegirl, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, sterilize, its a good story for what it is, how short it is for the amount of material that is in it, romance stuff, an outline rushing through the material, get to the ideas, who in this group is fun to hang out with?, the author more than the characters, genuine science fiction opening, faltered in her course, stockholders, visitors, aware of a cessation, bad sentence beauty, parts of Cat-Woman, badly worded, fictitious gravity, main salon, the entire midship section, to flounder in helpless confusion, they’re being attacked, skipped past, not a good story, interesting and kinda fun here and there, trouble following it, poorly written, omniscient, first person, a character narrator, more economy there, how to tell stories, 1st person, 3rd person, close and far, really important, detective novels told 1st person, Sherlock Holmes, 1st person from the 2nd main character’s point of view, Watson’s POV, very easy to follow, if he did see it he didn’t observe it, 3rd person, tightened up, Ray Cummings masturbating while writing this story, sexy stories, the girl here is terrible, how she is behaving makes no sense, aliens who come to Earth to kidnap all the women, not writing in the first half of the 20th century, explorers, our universe is an atom in a larger structure, make themselves really big, you’re blind, why are your blind, my eyes don’t work, why don’t you just replace your eyes, execute him, more ethical than we are, had Heinlein written that, a 10page philosophical discussion, elemental and frenetic, and then this happened, why it has a bad reputation, Lester Del Rey writing really short stories, three book series, good stuff as well, more detail, more sweat put into it, Jonathan as a the new Paul, shownoting a show with Paul, invite him back, email Evan, Cora couldn’t show up because her mom died, reschedule for sometime in the future, other plans, I honor my commitments, arguing himself into something, Paul makes the show worse, talking over people, not all being in the same room, a delay, distracted, bad for the listener, Paul can contribute well but often doesn’t, “comps” is what they call them, bad thinking, being worried about spoilers, bad modes of thought, why are other people interested in spoilers, fundamentally misunderstanding, ladies in glass cylinders coming to earth, 7 minute story, aliens kidnap all the women, research projects, spiderwomen, an excuse to read it, beef with this story as a cat-woman story, made her a pig, wildcat, mountain lions, didn’t do any research, remote or something, not thinking it through, care about ideas more than writing, nice writing, experiencing the story sequentially, the end is the most important part, two exciting novels, Donald E. Westlake crime novel, new Ace Double, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, no Alex?, LibriVox, set in Florida, good noir opening, Murder Mistress by Robert Colby, “Scott Daniels is a washed up showbiz announcer who hit the bottle a few too many times and blew his big chance.”, three and half hours, a lady drowning in quicksand as a sex fetish, mud, this is a new time, naked on a bed, I could read that, crime and mystery stories, more interested in the phenomena of these horny novels, naked woman on the bed pointing a gun, pink unmentionables, green negotiables, Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake, Ben Tucker, Smith will squawk, the small town aspect, Westlake is really good at his job, eating a ham sandwich, I’m looking for a guy named Smith, heavy browed, hand painted and too wide, front name, this is your lucky night, nice prose, painted ties, vintage 1961 feeling, Westlake is awesome, 4.5 hours, zoned out again, check in, a push notification, something stupid, addicted to the petty bourgeois, small freeholder, yeoman?, the dopamine, 46, pick up from you, it is good to get out of the house, enough to pay minimum wage, it is good to have hobbies, put a scanner somewhere in the middle of that, give it to the world, even just covers, archive.org’s custom scanner, ones from China, funky, wanting to preserve the book, designed for bound books, you can’t crack the spine on a sewn book, reams, come loose, quasi pornographic, Lost City Of The Damned by Alec Rivera [Charles Nuetzel], horny science fiction novel, sex, excitement, and the unknown, terrible in all the right ways, John Kendrick Bangs, Bangsian fantasy, like Beetlejuice (1988), The Good Place, A Houseboat On The Styx, inspired Riverworld, collaborative, a sequel, four books in the series, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, ghost stories, it just goes on, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, so cool, he doesn’t know where it is going, offered him $100,000, Thorne Smith, person turning into a goldfish, The Stray Lamb, Topper series, a navy, nautical fiction, supernatural, when a book that’s falling apart, there’s lots of things I could do, an unassailable defense, E.W. Hornung’s Raffles, the gay response to Sherlock Holmes, not being gay enough, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Bunny, a burglar, unbelievably gay, the lady in the mud puddle, in mud puddles?, why is this a thing, high heels, Barrett Whitener, mild mannered, Cary Grant, ok?, 1937 film, the novel is public domain, a few TV series, 78 episodes, Eric Idle, Transformers: The Movie (1986), Roddy McDowell, Bettlejuice sequel that nobody asked for, curious, what was left to be said?, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), an imperfect novelization, something really cool, a lot of infodump, an excuse to explain, depopulated Australia, shot without permission, one week at a time, in terms of story, reading it through a novel, more action and is simpler, incredible astounding wonderful, dog dies in both, Mel Gibson, [he has a monkey in the third one], 4th one is not good, 5th one, worst kind of idea, go watch the backstory happen, a very unnecessary film, 7 minute standing ovation at Cannes, just because a movie gets a trophy, Eisner awards, a popularity contest, a lady doing the petition, more like the nebulas, people campaign, understood the process, how to get into comics, Maus, not entertaining for kids, better than other homework assignments, leaves his burner on, wants to save on matches, a very long term view of this show, Jesse has an ideology (campaigning for certain things, campaigning against certain things), very hesitant to ever give Amazon any money, most people go along, get along, bootstrap, the PDF page, to try to get more shit on Librivox, hasn’t worked out that well, LibriVox won’t use Jesse as a source, they use Project Gutenberg, Haithi Trust, why it takes so long, very precise, Canadian and Australian ones, FadedPage, Scott Miller [of the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] is great, his agenda, to record unrecorded stuff, make a little bit of money, he likes this stuff, doing a ton of work, 200 episodes out, three times a week, he wants to mix it up, things that people request, ads in his podcast, the ones on youtube, on the other hand, an imperfect system, Mike [Vendetti] recording for Audible.com, he has other names too, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, the mushroom world, The Mad Planet, Clifford D. Simak, more packaging?, mutual on twitter, stuff for fun, used to be Jesse’s job, a tape gun, very precise, do things fast, Halloween costume, against store bought costume, diplodocus?, cardboard costume, you can model things up out of cardboard, homemade costume, a standing desk, so unergonomic, way too low, no warehouse, fairly small objects, so lucky about media mail, guy from Britain, copies of Analog, Children Of Dune, $40 shipping, silly, Connor can’t get anything in and out of Australia for a reasonable price, New Zealand, horrific, a person in the world today, internet, worst shithole countries, tweeting from Gaza, delivery of things, if there was ever a case, start with mail, an essential service, what makes a country, parcels and letters and things across the place, what made the Mongols an empire, without getting Mongolized, the postal agency, the main job of the government, insurance and mail, universal coverage, being Westlakian, make that explicit, before eveveryone dies, he goes down so smooth, he’s a good guy, The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block, the purported author, wanted to join the CIA, gets recruited, assassinating the president, love the premise, suggest both, five political figures, one man with a gun is enough for the job, a man who’s sole life function, Miles Dorn, he’s so good, the one set in Ireland with a folksinger, hung out with Maissa, Passport To Peril, Reading, Short And Deep short Lawrence Block stories, wonderful narrator, very powerful, good with the openings, professional newscaster, sidethings, horrible ads, normcore, Apple podcasts, regionally targeted, government health insurance, Uber teen accounts, big city thing?, am against, not invented something new, 88th birthday, surrounded by the elderly, dangerous, they can cut you in their gangs, make friends with young people, work at it, make em come on your podcast, meeting young people through science fiction, one pulp fiction friend younger, a year younger, everybody else, fifty is pretty young, aint that young, conversations with people, the whole point is the side benefits, a lot of time looking at books you want to read, help kids pass tests and get better marks in school, let’s do something that will help in the future, don’t lose money at it, shovelling money out the door is unsustainable, maintaining, spend time around cool paperbacks, real conversations about books, most people don’t read, they gain in value, an insight into that period, 1931, 1938, investigate more shudders, weird menaces, weird fiction, Weird Tales is still being published, dude, trolling Jesse, this ideology, only share things that can be shared, worrying about the terminator gene, monsanto’s plan to destroy farming, doesn’t affect your worldview, support illegal things to stop the terminator gene, watch a minute of it to see the BC legislature, Edison Motors, response to Tesla, as a guy, electrifying logging trucks, powerful youtube channel, we better pay attention to this, invited called the Green Party, a third party, pretty small in B.C.’s legislature, a bill to change funding for vehicle subsidization, election’s coming up, very different from American politics, not wholly incompetent clowns, so much clownage is happening, spread everywhere, clown world now, more enclownified, Kentucky legislative proceedings, seeing the room, special costume, threw off that yoke, judges don’t dress up funny, tradition is all we have left, a gavel, Alien Nation, tv series, main white guy, main human guy, alien girlfriend, the way they do the show, there’s aliens, pull out some fact about Mr. Spock’s physiology, builds up lore, lore is the most serious problem any Star Trek has, moved all her stuff in, I see you put up the clowns, paintings of clowns, we do not have clowns in our culture, cirsova, mental maps, no massive overlaps, new fiction, imagine if you were going to open a restaurant, not allowed to use food from after a certain year, recipes are not copyrighted or trademarked, secret recipe, formulations vs. recipes, why do recipe books exist?, she wants to try new food, the creative art, I should write a book, like their poetry, a reference book, not supposed to read it cover to cover, ooh we could make that, get up the courage to do one of the things in there, look at my art, the cookbook is kind of a dead art because of the internet, youtube channels, food algorithm, instagram, twitter, I’m now going to talk about god for the next couple of minutes, preface your conversation about god, why Jimmy Dore quit pot, a Jungian analyst, funny and interesting, spoilers skip ahead, fuck off, they think they’re supposed to, people are very copying, Seventh Victim, you really need to sell it, when they go to read Sheckley, unwreckable, a visual display, lots of money being spent, go to work and feel happy or sad, the narrator explains, hailing, cars going by, a weedwhacker, on a porch, in a room, a novel about cars recorded in a car, doesn’t edit it, how ratchet that is, so charming, can’t even call it pirated, never going to come into, he wanted to read this book to you, he’s a human being, the ideal form of being, people telling a story, another person enjoying that story, and talking about that story, a really good pitch, Louis Rossmann, laptop repairman philosopher guy, right to repair, not everything should be a subscription service, the right way to go, not getting a lot of traction, no money behind it, individuals trying to be ethical, something like a movement, Rossmann has a billionaire backer, leverage political change, leveraging their youtube channel to get a government subsidy, can’t find a place to build their factor, they’re a municipality, Merritt, B.C., other countries are courting them, moving farther north, less investment taken, idle land, investment property, vocal complaints, we want government to be somewhat responsive, Apple will fuck it up on purpose, past the pain point, Starbucks getting shit on for Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s friends kids were killed, Starbucks gave $3 million, special beans, be on the phone with Nancy Pelosi to get shit happening, two gift cards, Tim Horton’s ones, Starbucks, big corporate now, its fine, donuts, Starbucks’ food is very expensive, $3.60, cheap for their products, an expensive part of the world, in terms of land, hard to find housing, a city but suburbs, unhoused, hobos, houseless, tentless, half a duplex, half-housed, housing many animals, some raccoons, big swollen teats, some babies, what racoon milk tastes like, the science of racoon milk, latch on and give a little suck, made redundant, life in rural Kentucky, mixed up with weird apologies for Joe Biden, Trump Derangement Syndrome, sniffing kids, blatant lying, confabulating memories, gross children grabbing, Astounding, doesn’t know he’s on camera, nobody calls him on it, his daughter’s diary, she left it somewhere, like the son left the laptops, woman sentenced to prison for stealing and selling Ashley Biden’s diary, going to therapy and telling the therapist her dad was having showers with her, pretty damning if true, Hunter calling his dad a pedophile, to hurt it his dad, pawing children, hand on a girl’s breast, evil that he gets away with that, a lot going around, what percentage?, double digits?, a survey, look around, just in your own life, it’s not zero, Biden paws girls breast, video distorts, granddaughter, here’s the apology for it, Natalie Biden, Beau Biden’s daughter, a Biden who’s not allowed to be a Biden, John Snow, what Game Of Thrones is about, politics, titillation, perverted sex stuff, Scott liked it, George R.R. Martin, huge entourage of women, Freya Stark, women’s brains, not a handsome man, got money, an attraction to the storytelling, for women, something to him, the first book is in the show, why people are into it, so much of it, the media stuff is not reading, people like talking about things around the watercooler, Americans are very prudish, HBO would have a little bit of nudity, traditionally verboten, high drama, reversals, responding to Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth is escapist, Martin’s vision of Westeros, trying to be realist, got dragons, war of the roses, infighting between royal families, bottom up characters, when you see a princess get raped, that’s dramatic, girl mind mentality, they’re different, common core, women are weaker than men, shorter than men, things growing inside your body for 9 months, women care about health more, watch Alien Nation with Meg, watch the pilot, cheer for schooling, the Ruby Bridges story, desegregation story, govt. agents, sit in a classroom by herself all day, very TV dramatic, how fucked up American morality is, prudishness, the names are so funny, the original 1988 movie, a family drama done as a buddy cop show, got punchy, funny names, Sam Fransisco, low level humour in the background, another baby, needs to find a binnaum, Albert Einstein, you’re gonna let Albert fuck your wife?, be in the room while the partner is being cuckolded, Heinlein style violation of norms, this is all biological, made up to tell stories like that, to break down prejudices, so lefty feelgood, genuine SF, little details, weirdly sexy show, sex stuff on Fox TV in 1990s, cancelled, brought it back, reshoot the final scene, set in 1995, highly rated show, second to last episode: child sex slavery with politicians, nothing stays in print anymore, Netflix shows removed from Netflix, lost the license or embarrassed, not vertically, horizontal, vs. spherical, own the mines for the raw materials for your cars, marketing and movie theaters, merging with competitors, productions that it greenlights, Quentin Tarantino will own Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) in 20 years, a Star Trek movie, see you next week.

Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings - from Terror Tales, May 1938

In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #815 – READALONG: Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Jesse, and Connor Kaye talk about Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
novelization, Terry Kaye is Terry Hayes, he’s from the UK, UK phrases, balustrade, John Olsen is Jesse’s hero, he’s awesome, his channel AudiobooksForTheDamned, a website, a facebook group, waybackmachine, four years ago, a coda at the end, acknowledgements, not reading from his car, road trip, parked on the side of the road, someone else is driving, reading while moving, carsick, front porch, sounds like recorded in his car, backed up by hearing the weedwhacker, a guerrilla audiobook, pirate audiobooks, illicit audiobooks, books for the blind, audiobook sighted people are not allowed to have, a serial killer recorded one, its immoral, executing and deleting people, Phil Gigante, Stainless Steel Rat books, arrested and plead guilty to, photos from a 14 year old girl, he’s been canceled, he’s out of prison, good narrator, maybe not a very good person, announcements on some websites, really good narrating voice, he’s a human being who’s still alive, prisoners are humans to, a platform, consumer should have the choice, consumer logic, how to live properly, the movie Stone (1974), a necessary precursor to Mad Max (1979), Toecutter, essentially the same kind of person, a biker in a biker gang, the main character, good actor, good character, largely the same, riding around Australia’s coast and getting revenge, noticeably nice, movie and novelization, leaning into exploitation, naked girls and naked men, equal opportunity nakedness, dicks swinging in the water there, cheap, low budget, intentionally salacious, the bikeys being on drugs at the start, the ending is fucking fantastic, a cop film, goes undercover with a biker gang, usual plot arc, accepted in the gang, an anthropological film, trope maker not a trope follower, ahead of its time, just a job, you’re one of us now, beat the shit out of him, doesn’t press charges, that’s the cost of leaving the gang, speaks to a lot of things in Australian society, upper-middle class, his girlfriend is rich, they have a house, a car, a kid, a dog, similar themes, people who are living within society’s rules, people living outside of society’s rules, we’re outside the law, Mad Max is about the whole of society, scale shifting, lawlessness is in control, the legal system is neutered, inability to impose penalties, no justice anymore, every film after that, progressively worse, maintain it, justice?, society?, then outlaws have a society of a kind, a hierarchy exists in a way, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the importance of stone, a gang that’s being hunted, by a cop, vicious crimes, they’re bad, badass and bad, behaving improperly, raping a lot of people, stealing things, murdering people, making cat noises while on roofs, stealing people’s ice cream, be careful girl I’ve seen him lick his eyebrows clean, slightly different, made more explicit, The Dark One, they go to his farm, May lady, she’s the hero of the film and the book too, she’s about protecting people, runs out of bullets, Max is not the hero, when the goose dies (he’s just burned), she’s going to make it, the wife is still alive, he leaves the bedside and hunts down, ruptured spleen, he’s like a zombie, listening like a zombie, revenge on his mind, one of the greatest movies ever, better than The Road Warrior, Fury Road, the prequel [Furiosa] looked terrible, no longer present, May Swaise, connected, related, she’s the aunt?, dead partner’s mother?, the hero car before the black and black, M. Rockatansky, the missing partner, through a connection with the cops and turning in Cundulini’s hand, makes arrangements, a bed and breakfast, she invites them in, protection away, danger that’s happening outside, the character of Benno, adult farmhand or son, jump scare, trying to be helpful, Mad Max II, expansions or repeats of Mad Max 1, truck runs over a biker, parallelism, truck that’s on a railroad track, road train scene, Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, Night Rider, lieutenants, biker gangs don’t work that way, Johnny The Boy, the source of ignition, when Toecutter dies the movie isn’t over, Max doesn’t kill Toecutter, called out in the book, the importance of reading the book and the film text, always started as a movie, based on the script and filling in the details, details brought out, in Stone how do you join the gang?, a probationary period, they have a vote, this is a pirate ship, history of pirates, we are lied to, disnifyed version of pirates, Robert Louis Stevenson, pirates didn’t bury their treasure, invented democracy and pensions, horrific exploitation, bigger responsibility, everybody is elected, captain, quartermaster, here’s the plan, they share you out, a covenant, until we hit a certain number, renegotiate, sign the articles, abide by the rule of the ship, no smoking below decks, no women on the ship, awesome and democratic, physical intimidation thing, any one man can be taken down by any two man, a cartoon version of a badguy or pirate ship is, guys who like not obeying society’s laws, they interact with society, a montage of scenes, goes around to all the suspects, team members, they attract business, they are business, they adopted this place, women lining up to be with them, the whole point of Stone, they’re human beings that are not cartoons, isn’t for everyone, respectable and full of respect, different values, they don’t kill him, they respect him even though he’s shit, the grievance, the ArmaLite gangs, Road Warrior was a bigger hit, more action, simpler, more cartoony, amped up, the film that George Miller wanted to make, Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II, Terminator 2, The Terminator is a better film, parallel remake, reviewing the movie series, Fury Road is a visual treat, plotwise it is retarded, how simple vs. complex, the novel drills down into some of the worldbuilding details, complements it, the first chapter, what is the world this novel is set in, far in the future, a transcontinental highway, not set in Australia, no references to Australia, looseness with the words, to the other coast, not a lot of bridge action, inter vs. trans, across vs. between, no ArmaLite guns in the movie, the M-16, they don’t exist in the movie or the book, shotguns and a pistol, for an action movie there’s not that many guns, ran out of bullets real quick, I was saving these, a low magic world, a quote from the beginning of the book, cattle, there’s no animals in the film, a chicken mentioned, there is food, Goose steals the fries from a guy, “victims of a society which now relied on laboratory-produced proteins for nourishment and fast-food pulp for taste”, the dystopia of ourworld, disconnected from farms, even on May’s farm, a wheelbarrow, no animals, George Miller, George Kennedy, a contemporary action movie, couldn’t do it for a number of reasons, they needed abandoned buildings, the Halls Of Justice, clearly an abandoned building, guerilla filmaking, like Breaker Morant, Sun City, Sunshine Coast, Jerusalem, wee Jerusalem, putting things together, in the film of Mad Max, the tractor trailer in Mad Max II, methane, Prime Mover, a term used in the novelization, the Prime Mover ran over Toecutter, another word for God, Goose killed Goose, Fifi, that was not on the job, he was attacked by Johnny The Boy, the mirroring and the parallelism, Mad Max is not the hero, shown to be the hero, cleaning his hands with a towel, the incompetent cops, Roop and Charly, Big Bopper, doesn’t look 15, the chosen one, without a partner, Fifi has to tell his boss, given a hero car, we need heroes, the police commisioner, a kendo appointment, bamboo katana, lure him with candy, the feted one, his real one is Mad Max, paralleled between the second lead of the gang, Bubba Zanetti’s costume, accented with chrome (instead of bronze), a space blanket, quiet, the advisor to Toecutter, it’s your job to get him back on the straight and narrow, the path of becoming a proper member, Johnny doesn’t have a tear [tattoo], an insight into the structure, those kind of relationships, terrorizing Jerusalem, a couple, the Chevrolet, the Ford, hot-ride pipes, that girl and that boy are raped, the girl is tied to Johnny the Boy, rape and destroy party, literally chained to her, chained to a car and lit on fire, like what happened to Goose, the parallel structuring, good acting and acting sequencing, foreshadowing, the injustice, the whole town wouldn’t show up, the Turkey, called out in the film ever so briefly, a night scene, ambulance chasing experience, road gangs, “it’s in the food”, another night in the meatgrinder, have you eaten yet, there’s an awesome futuruistic story happenin in the background of the revenge film, all the sponsors, Kawasaki, cigar company, the girl and the guy, it’s Mary, this is a retelling of iconic stories in a way that we don’t recognize, what happens on the hill, the fruit of their union is one of revenge and horror, what makes Max good, Jesse is a mom, she’s a wife, when she is runover and loses her baby, fridging in comics, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick dog motivation, ran over his wife and killed his killed, the worst possible relationship with other human beings, setup setup setup, his boss is conspiring behind his back, it’s all fake, the proper relationship police should have with biker gangs, clubs not gangs, despite the cartoonishness we don’t feel, Max van has a spaceship on the side of it, lost control of the roads, a game of chase, Max is running rogue, he’s stolen that car, “the forbidden zone”, the Outback, roadtrains have guards on them, unintentional, special, Judge Dredd, paints a world that’s just like that, a few elite cops, very similar, Dredd (2012), post apocalyptic story, learning some vocabs, larakins, hoons, boisterous often badly behaved young man, larakinism, a ratbag, plays pranks, fucks around, an Australian of the kind that gets kicked out of England, crutch,phonetically, crutch, crox, an A-frame, here he is the walking armpit, bitumen, asphalt, Terry Hayes was hired as a scriptwriter for the following movies, The Year Of The Locust, car chase, motorcycle scenes, what people smell like, seaside home, the monster mask, a rare book in North America, buy em and sell em, $70, abebooks, the cost to post to America, $40 for shipping, a crateful, scan it and put it up online, the import expert business, follow the Man’s rules, listening to the radio, here are the regulations, as long as the paperwork is clean, Max’s objections, terminal psychotics, Toey, excited or nervous, hoofing the line, the first pursuit special, Night Rider, that scag and his floozy, hopped up/supercharged, two different versions, Mel Gibson looking shocked, the movie poster, a biker’s mask, commissioned the poster, still financing the film, Frank Frazetta, the 1985 rerelease, SuperChannel, novelizations are something that have basically died,you liked it so much you wanted, the novelization on Predator (1987), people trying to deny me access to knowledge, the summer of 1987, to spite the people are going to deny me access, novelization for a videogame, The Legend Of Zelda, really fucking expensive, one for Christmas, one for your birthday, indie games for a couple of dollars, installment, enjoyed the shit out of it, 100 pages, 8-12 year olds, you couldn’t get access to the media you wanted, the right effect, experienced it vicariously, reading is on the decline, just a fact, the publishing industry, bookstores were around an a thing, real estate speculation, a primary sale for a secondary sale, we’re going into the new meta, the new paradyme, you don’t own anything, subscription, all very evil, the movie and the book of Mad Max are becoming much more plausible, we assume a nuclear war in 1985, old footage, footage of nuclear bombs, we filled in the blanks a lot, the food stuff, called out in the book, granola crunching farmers eating whole foods, in the 1970s, brown bread vs. white bread, Bryan Alexander, protesting, a plant based diet for the school’s cafeteria, tacos or hotdogs, make your menu choices, make your food at home, loudness of relationship to food, the loosening of the control of government, the government is incompetent, larakins, hoons, taking over the roads, working in the city, cut loose by going into the country, the setup for the second film, Geiger counter, more and more cartoonish, the gangs are so evil and fun, a fuckin nasty film, the worst we see are the hand of Goose, the knee of Max, the reality of the gang, what they’re doing is plausible, victimizing people more, sadistic, fairly balanced in the second film, petrol, victimize a man and a woman, gap toothed guy, boot on somebody’s hand, raping this couple, stuff pulled from the first film, more palatable, a little kid almost gets run over, oh Christ they’re going for population, break off pursuit, Charley gets it in the throat, the good guys wear white, Cunégonde and Casca, Candide by Voltaire, a comic novel, half brother and sister, all the names are jokes, goodpussy, a tutor, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, any evil is all for the good, girls chased by monkeys, that’s what the male of the species looks like, a prostitute has half her ass eaten, Mudguts, Lurch?, Clank, game names, somebody had carved out a piece of his ass, on the run, he flees, pretty awful, especially Max, this guy is not going to get punished, justice in the world for ourselves, if you have enough money and the circumstances don’t line up, if you have influence, make a lot of problems for them, on that note, bathroom break, the world of Judge Dredd, more what George Miller would have liked to have done, judges fulfilling, they are the judicial system, hero cops that operate outside the law, the world is simply to wild, too easily taken advantage of, direct justice, the police commissioner, the break down of society, more interesting, it’s perfect, teeter over the top into apocalypse, things go wrong in such a horrible way, he says fuck it, he abandons his wife, he abandons his morals, after the end of the film, he could have gone back with his life, Mad Max as a franchise, a character as a plot element, they all stand on their own, the gyro captain, Bruce Spence, as different characters, they play the same, the feral kid grows up, the legendary story about The Road Warrior, preceding and following film, in this weird space, they blow up the car in the second movie, it is back in the fourth movie, they’re not connected that way, Sprog, fulfill a purpose, she’s given a name and has a character, she’s to be fridged, it’s a guy movie, Fury Road, Max’s backstory is changed, the guilt that he bears, the people he couldn’t protect, flashbacks to characters that never existed, other adventures, missing adventures, “Mad”, a moral man trying to survive in an amoral world, what that does to a person, they thrive in this world, the survival of the fittest, Max’s car is not ready, the fuel line, he fucked it up, he’s trying to help, a lot from the pov of the gang, a surprise in the movie, they don’t try to kill max after they kill the girl, how to be proper, excised from the film, Goose’s girlfriend, Katamine, Catamite, not Calamity, a lovely scene in the car, the mooners go buy, wild larakins, just hoons, vicious gang members, having fun, she almost kills them, being prepared to defend your family is a very masculine fantasy, a story men like to see told over and over again, they’ve excised all that shit, competence family, his car is stolen, never matters, just get to the point, that’s why it is the best film, The Road Warrior is a better introduction, he’s dressed in black, federation of gangs, gay Mohawk, strength to strength, literally has him on a dog collar, to release the hound, his lover, the feral kid, comic relief, a black suited character, he has his own motivation, the positive character, help the good team, some sort of redemption, offered a relationship with the warrior woman, it goes nowhere, choosing when you’ve got two teams, Humongous’ army, calculated and smart, a very seductive team, why are these guys hoarding this gasoline, rooting for the oil company, they choose to blow it up, its very simplistic, in other revenge films, the inciting of the revenge quest, Death Wish (1974), trod on his daisies, the inciting incident that makes him turn back, a little bit like Yojimbo (1961), tumbled by the gang, Gyro Captain, they kill his dog, fucked up, like John Wick, precipitates the third act, works well in both cases, just in time to setup the massive chase scene, there’s nothing like it, the visceral awesome, dogs dying, the happy family, two year old sprog, on vacation, goes for a swim, she sees the dog dead, May is awesome, she has agency, disabled, deaf, opens her home to people in need, protecting them at gunpoint, hardy country woman, Casca, the town being called out, every other small town in Australian movies, saloon underneath, a milkbar, local cafe, long formica bar, milkshakes, a blender, a big stainless steel cup, ice cream milkshake, a reference to A Clockwork Orange, literally drinking milk, the symbols are all boobs, soda [jerk], a series of books, male competence porn, The Executioners, The Destroyer, The Eternal Mercenary, the character who stabbed Jesus with the Spear of Destiny, cursed to walk the earth until Jesus comes back, he can’t die, he’s like a Highlander, connect the movies together, he sees Mary raped, arrest the criminal, Johnny the Boy is the mirror, new to the gang, they both survive to the end of the film, everything is inverted, a Lovecraft story that’s the story of Jesus that’s reversed, The Dunwich Horror, invisible evil brother, torn apart by dogs, Max is like Casca, kills the evil that is Johnny the Boy, I’m sick, it’s not my fault, doing exactly what Johnny didn’t want to do, he has to abandon his family, he’s still mad in the desert, he won’t join any of the sides, he can’t trust anyone, the inciting incident in picking a side, a tale to tell to you to be careful, how do we end up not in this relationship, the gang is fake but the cops are real, their colour is real, pressure from above, the sides, and beneath, how do we not end up in this horrible relationship?, we have to do some politics and point up, government in the first Mad Max movie, like in Stone, they’re going to do their shit, appreciating life and living it to the best, take some drugs, respect your fellow man worthy of respect, a politician who wants to change things, starts with an assassination, intellectual anthropology vs. art, Z-900s, before we run out of time, some of the best writing in the book, Goose’s birthday, a motorcycle guy, scooter, road rash, no helmet, no leathers, cars are a little safer, has taken these long road trips, it was poetry, went a long way to explain his motivation, the excitement of what he is doing, they are mirrors again, freedom, escaping the body, becoming something else, not like a car, you’re sitting in a machine, a ragdoll within the machine, you don’t have that on a motorcycle, you are literally in control of every part of it, it responds only to your input and the road, when you ride a motorcycle, an extension of you, a suit, clothing, the response of the machine to your physical movements, when you want to turn, more in control on a motorcycle, sharper turns, you have to physically move, the toecaps sparking against the ground, camera over the shoulder, the camera moves, the rider’s point of view, riding a horse, more like a cooperative effort, a good relationship with a horse, a negotiation, the best riders have a deep trust relationship with their animals, what the rider asks them to do, attraction to motorcycles, the sense of freedom a motorcycle gives you, two weeks on a motorcycle, grew up around motorcycles, cars are fucking expensive, buy a used car, fuck interest, a midlevel car is $10000, $1000 for a really nice car in the 70s, the inflation calculator, the price of cars has become like homes (unaffordable), cars are luxury products, there’s no money in affordable apartments, they’re buying it for an investment property, combined with the safety insanity, less driver training, drivers being protected in the event of an accident, height restrictions, pop up headlights are not allowed anymore, hit in the middle is better?, increases the weight cost, Japan does it differently, subsidized a different way, different results, read all day, Elon Musk, making electric cars, thousands of Teslas, even on Vancouver Island, in the city everybody has one, incentive of $5-7000, carbon offsets to make gas guzzlers, double subsidized, you’re buying an Elon Musk product, what you’re not seeing, there’s no way for you to fix it yourself, another cost, why motorcycles attracted Connor, a Suzuki GS500, $2200, no insurance, written off in a bad accident, registration, third party insurance, $500 year, mechanical repairs, 50k, mechanical problems, the chain got too worn, travelled all over the place, two week trips, Uluru, around Tasmania, you can ride the whole day in less than $100 of fuel, the freedom a motorcycle can give you, the entrapments of society, a shitbox car, parking, need to have a job to afford this, why bikies, why there are no truck gangs, vanlife, live rent free on the highway, the copyright situation, if some corporate lawyer suggests, the new copyright situation, only recent and hot, or under particular control, full film, hundreds of films online completely free, the most recent things, anything past that is online, sometimes it is Tubi, youtube, Ok.ru, just use an adblocker, the cartoonish nature, the visual is more important than it being realistic, based on a finite resource, a constant supply of new parts, cracked engine case, fuel line’s fractured, the disabled mechanic, you got 12, completely disregarding the reality, how long til Cundulini’s bike is ready, go meet the truck, George Miller and George Kennedy, scrappy at one point, he’s become old and rich, the storm sequence, too much CGI, everything is practical, he’s not Hollywoodified, Tina Turner, the amount of shit that’s poured on, let’s do the Blue Lagoon is Mad Max world, a serious step-down, alive forever, the redeeming arc, like Yojimbo again, need a leader, everything in Sun City is great, you know girl power and Max Max is there, the premise is broken, why prequels don’t make any sense, the backstory is to get you to the thing you want, A Mad Max Saga, the Fallout tv show, its not perfect but it is very good, the original Fallout game from 1997, the wanderer, dog’s named dogmeat, lore, a sense of humour, a funny situation, winks and nods, goofiness, the Gyro Captain, its my snake I trained it I get to eat it, insult humour, the ultimate film, just watch Road Warrior again, he has camels now, such a cool airplane, they see Sydney, the whole mythology, bigger not better, some amazing stuff, he recycles everything, a saxophone, Tina Turner’s stilt house, the sort of scene, he has to give up his weapons, none of those weapons get used, Doctor Who’s jacket, we can see the descent happening, Jesse plays the saxophone, scrapping, parallelism, symmetry, looking for symmetry, intrinsically resonates, video essay about doppelgangers, mirrorings, they know it to be good, hard to do without the vocabulary, the mirror of the beginning to the end, builds to the hero reveal, he’s the least interesting cop, his personality is he likes his wife, coulda bin any actor who was handsome in that role, an interview with George Kennedy looking very rich, will Mel Gibson come back?, whatever the answer is it doesn’t matter, he was a replaceable protagonist, Tom Hardy, they needed a big name actor, as an old man, the eternal hero, the greatest action film ever put to film, Mad Max one is a better movie, what it is to be a man, in cahoots to try to keep him on, Fifi is an interesting character, he’s got a plan, people need heroes, the message of the film undercuts that, at the end he gives the kid a choice, he becomes an anti-hero, a great anti-hero, a film that is more Mad Max, The Rover (2014), about it being on the edge of the apocalypse, almost a better sequel to Mad Max than Mad Max II, motivation for revenge, his dog died, his dog is in the boot of the car, his relationship with his dog, gets pretty fuckin dark, his wife was cheating on him, he murdered his wife, he knew that the world was fucked, he was a farmer, he’s a bad guy, he murdered his wife and his lover, I knew that the world was over, that’s the reality, that’s Mad Max, being a paramedic is going to show you some shit, driving yourself if a horrific act, that can happy at any time, falling into the street, a pedestrian, make eyecontact with the people who can run Jesse over, cousin blind in one eye has been hit twice, with a car its usually not on purpose, outsourced to manufacture and design, required by law to wear a seatbelt, ad campaigns, shock ads, very graphic car accidents, put people face to face with the consequences of having an accident, criticized and shocked, true stories being recreated, people texting on their phone, t-boned, people screaming, somebody dead, really horrific, people were against it because it shows the real life consequences, once you see the videos coming out of Gaza, what are you supposed to do with that information, any blue will do, my god what have we done, mal-and-mis-and-disinformation, cigarette packaging, lung cancer and tumours, it could contribute, very expensive not allowed to smoke almost anywhere, working at a tobacconist, 90% of the customers were over 40, not actually as dangerous as we were lied to about, alcohol can kill you, as a toxin, drinking too much alcohol in an evening, there was no connection between melanoma and cigarettes, you do you while you can, I shouldn’t be guilt tripping you about it, subject to the propaganda all around you, Alberta is the most rebellious part of Canada, felt uncomfortable, a very defensive driver and rider, tons of car accidents, a moment’s inattention, 1% is a hell of a lot, going 110km down a road, a T-intersection, an offramp to a rest stop, some dickhead stopped in the main lane, when you’re moving, that car is getting bigger really fast, sandwiched between two cars, get the fuck out of the way, the best case scenario, passenger vs. energy, safetyism, you’re in a chair, it’s happening, a slight unexpected something, a chipmunk on the road, a car that’s smoking, responding to something unusually, the takeway, how do we not have this relationship of escalating violence, turn off the internet, control the internet, if we don’t have free communication…, the bad people say the bad things, the top-down insensitive way, keep the money rolling in, if they find out we’re stealing them blind, people’s jobs to go on the internet, three day old account, tweet is deleted, job to fight what their boss wants, rewarded to get that, you’re taste of the cash, your job is fake, doing it because they’re in the bubble so hard, how do you end up there?, what if I’m wrong, that would be horrible, the dentist company, the policies are changed, asking permission to do things, why are they asking for consent now?, do you want to have fluoride?, why are they asking now?, they can bill it differently?, too many things like that, new forks for your motorcycle, coil overs, you don’t have time to research, that first motorcycle, at the time, 100k isn’t reliable, odometer only goes to 100,000, only meant, off the grid here, heard from other people, this is why you need information on the internet, brilliantly helpful, this guy is full of shit, formed the opinion, bad opinions formed, almost dead, does that guy run a dealership, do you think good information drives out bad information?, a tossup, fear, fear is hugely motivating, a trip to Uluru, in the middle of the fuckin desert, too much money to get a tow-truck, 3000km, cheap old cars leave them on the side of the road, if this does go bad, after a certain point of your own personal experience, things can always go wrong unexpectedly, they come off the new lot with problems too, fear is deflected by insurance, BCAA, road insurance, roadside assistance, how the money is made, a model known for mechanical problems, a Holden Barina, the reality, Donald Westlake, obsessed with insurance, comic relief characters, comparing insurance, one short story about insurance, what ifs are the most susceptible, when the war on terror started, everything was what if, two different bottles of shampoo, these things are possible, how likely is it?, when it comes to fear, climate change, it’s going to do this, it’s going to do that, track your accuracy, this sounds bogus, you haven’t looked into it, the temperature is so high, one of the tricks they were doing, ground temperature, the air above the ground is never as hot as the air above it, measuring the ground temperature, there are trends, we still have glaciers that they promised would have been melted, the global ice cap was going to be open all year, traffic from Europe to Asia ice free, is this fear being generated legit or not, control and manipulate before, the most recent one, as deadly as they said, if you don’t get the shot, fear is the motivator, it did for some people, people did die of COVID, largely ineffective, people died from the shots than died from COVID, the super-scary truth that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, look into it and really see, just like the flu, inoculate the body, prevents you from getting COVID, changed the definition, a gene therapy, a new tech, the flu doesn’t work very well, it’s worth so much money, far off Mad Max, back to The Rover, deserves to be discussed, 6.4 rating on IMDB, the ending puts some people off, the reveal, the entire motivation, oh, really, probably annoyed some people, the strength of this story, a man who has nothing by the end of the film, no real hope for the future, a man with nothing to lose, he’s the terminal crazy he was afraid he would become, angry crazy shithead, Mad Max style story, so many spinoff ripoff, Escape From The Bronx, go out into the desert, dune buggies, the 80s was full of it, vehicular combat, no bikies, more realistic, no combat with cars, people get out of cars to fight, it expands upon, if it took place, it would be a couple of the years after the first Mad Max, fuel stations, give me $100, people are getting really desperate, under martial law, the military arrest people, Mad Max 1.5, noticeably more grim and serious, so nasty and scary, resonated a lot to things happening in Australia, the Chinese influence, radio stations in Chinese playing English songs, part of Australian, Greeks and Italians as the last immigrant set, families for hundreds of years, the gold rush, more so in recent years, it wasn’t there to make a point, a reality of modern Australia, one scene, Australia has survived, tourism, manufacturing, coal takes a long time to be replenished, the wealth of modern Australia, coal trains, armed guards, one of the characters in the rover is a fly in fly out miner, the money dried up, you should do a video on The Rover, ten years ago, a science fiction story, a science fiction story, what makes it science fiction, the relationship between government and people, the roads, the food, the consequences rolling down hill to a certain set of people, bronze vs. skags, rocker panels on their jackets, they’re not how a pirate ship or a gang actually works, they’re an embodiment of the fear of anarchy, they’ll come and rape your grandma, clunk having sex with a blowup elephant, rapists, they only respect the Night Rider, never explained, willing to kill cops, maybe?, he’s stolen that car, it’s a cop car that he’s stolen, studied it a lot, so well put together, the religious stuff before, he’s calling it out there, playing the game of lifting and using, it isn’t called Jerusalem by accident, explaining things, when they leave Johnny the Boy behind, a goat they staked out, spaced out on drugs, the reason people do drugs, a when to escape, obsessed with your avatar in a game, get in good with the gang, brushing Toecutter’s hair, a catamite servant boy, it is never explained, beloved, the beach scene, the scene killing goose, make him face the horror, that’s what we do, killing someone at a distance, it’s the same, Johnny, on the other end of the button, you have stock in company that makes the missiles, even better, then you don’t have any connection, make that company illegal, something cool about what Toecutter is doing there, very villainous and very solid, more of a sense of it in the novelization, especially in Fury Road, the old world becoming mythologized, remember him when you look at the night sky, valkries, a corporeal person, a spirit goes into the sky, a satanic ceremony, these guys are amiable and nice in their way, quite responsible in comparison, we are not liking the tennis lady and her parties, that’s not real, the vagabond lifestyle, not wanting to hide out and go and get a drink, not denying their animal nature, when we see that mythologized, goes right to the end, Goose as the same kind of character for Max, someone who was good and who was killed, what made Night Rider good is he was wild, Max breaks him, he’s talking about his belief in the supernatural legend of himself, witness me, trailer bait, very disconnected from the reality, patrol the highways, a wife and a kid, pay the bills, loving the road, way more sophisticated, less and a less sophisticated as it goes, Blue Lagoon heaven, to a fake heaven that doesn’t exist, a mythical place of green, disabused of that by showing up, this is degeneration, way to far away from the ambulance for way to long, nearly 50 years, a franchise, a video game out of it, this is no longer art, scrappy art, less and less art, something else completely, a franchise is even worse, Stone is an art film, that beach scene, boobs are all out, that was beautiful, not even into dicks, God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), heavy metal, weird funk, an anthropological film, how they decide things, new member, a part of the club, the new member stands up, my name is Connor, they slap the patch on you, a consequence, he fucks up in some way, shave his eyebrows off, he’s gonna get a name out of that, confrontations with the cops, swastika on the thing, buddihism, bikers in North America and , stahlhelms, nazi pistols, nazi flags, quite the opposite, taking a trophy, counting coup, disillusioned soldiers, fake biker gang, Sons Of Anarchy, interpersonal drama, biker gang culture, saw their friends killed, The Wild One (1953), reflecting rather than explaining, interactions with these people, not willing to submit, going off and getting killed in wars, why the biker gangs still exist, rotarian groups, shriners, the masons, they’re all dying, in the shit of it, served in the military, time with their friends away from women, companionship on the road, bikes, car clubs, not organized like bikers, living an alternative lifestyle, amish as a response to horror, why do you have that on your stuff, taking the badges of your enemy, a good documentary I’d like to see, thoughts and lives, biking culture, Japan, rebelling, post-war, disillusionment, no point of being part of this society, a hangover, human life thrown away, what is it ever doing for me, an alternative way of living, to be able to explain it, Blue Ruin (2013), pretty great, Taken (2008) is palatable, competence porn, alcoholic, the lowest of the low rising up to meet a challenge, his parents are murdered, he tries to take revenge, the folly of revenge, Momento (2000) too, Green Room (2015), music at a nazi bar, witness a murder, lock themselves in the green room, a pocket Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), a struggle, at night during the week, ping you online, great chatting.

Mad Max - Frank Frazetta

Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #814 – READALONG: The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Evan Lampe talk about The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
fellow creatures, historian who fails to read, big long subtitle, “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist”, his thesis, thesis proved, a revolutionary abolitionist, disrupting existing systems, I think slavery is bad, moral arguments, centuries after, Fredrick Douglas, big long excuse, don’t worry, doesn’t have many sources, well sourced book, the one book that Benjamin Lay published, Quaker records, newspaper accounts, maybe met Voltaire, knew the same guy, a figure for which there is a fair amount, describing every inch of the portrait, not a first hand account, major quibble, promised a dwarf who lived in a cave, not a cave, Will’s household, a science fiction fantasy podcast, not Evan of late, The Many Headed Hydra, Villains Of All Nations, Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graber, the other enlightenment, pass the whip, not ducking, a preamble, a lot of people read science fiction the wrong way, they think it is about space stuff and people who live in the future and that’s not what science fiction about, science fiction is about ideas, and when it isn’t about ideas it’s not good science fiction or it’s just like an entertainment, Evie in the title, what’s the percentage chance, last man on earth, a joke science fiction, maybe 7 or 20 or 50 pages, dealing with some idea of science, physics, geology, chemistry pretty rare, when you stray away from that, leads you naturally to mystery, Sherlock Holmes, deeply connected to science fiction, about perceiving reality, history is like that, holodomor, does it have the story in the history, backed up by evidence, gender and sex, reaching back in time and making a connection, goes into the future, making suggestions about human nature, shoot Jesse with a phaser, you and Rousseau, I’m just in it for the lols, Ray Bradbury, mostly connected to childhood, obsessed with how did we end up here, specific parts of America, Ohio, America as an idea, not a phenomenon, most people don’t read, all the shaming, a powerful reader, it was important to read this, talking about the just produced play, a play about Mr. Lay, he attended too, mostly about Quaker politics, mostly attacks Quakers, Quaker records, beefs with various Quaker churches, around the edges, services of other denominations, listen and disrupt, a real shit disturber, wrapped up in Quakerism, the English Civil War, Gerrard Winstanley, Book of Revelation, William Blake, the diggers, seekers, New Model Army debates, an important chaplain, a man named Dell, apocalypse, important to our own times, radical Christians, ultimate confrontation, ruling class of England divided, things seem possible, we’re in this crisis, what crisis are we living?, the 20th century crisis, falling rates of profit, smell that around, globalization, the fall of a huge empire, some kind of feudal system, youtubers, the 17th century crisis, climate change, declining birthrates, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, post-war liberal order, China, Russia, “rogue state”, Putin’s gonna ride over on a bear, creeping towards, two little wars going on right now, Israel killing Gaza and Ukraine, not many men left to fight it, that’ll decline your birthrate, college in the 90s, graduate school in Fall 2000, a class on globalization, Francis Fukuyama, how quaint, the end of history, Battle of Seattle, 1999, Zapatistas, China joining the WTO, impute a singular idea, trick people in the west, Jesse is the most grounded of you guys, studying Mao, just a workin sailor, Mao was just a librarian, a war against the Japanese, all undergraduate, not interested in the paperwork, there’s always a level of academia sniffing its own farts, mainstream media, people of a certain class, what the academics are telling us, controlling the popular narrative, making trouble in his own church, this guy is important, making people talk about him and his ideas, living the virtues he claims to think are important, lays out people who have made counterarguments, general theory of how things work, bottom up, history from below, the personal aspect, this dwarf guy is a lot like Evan, vegetarian, an anarchist rather than a Quaker, he didn’t learn his learning within the church, to be the radical he was, living in Barbados, mistreating a thief, he came to his own revelation, he used the church as his vehicle of disturbance, hoping Fred would be here, religious thinking, Jesse can’t submit, if you’re a Quaker you don’t have to submit, as a child you have to go to church with your parents, how this institution works, holding the threat of hell over people’s heads, hell and temporal punishment, slave holders should be put to hard labour, the Puritans, the Methodists, rebellion against the church of England, E.P. Thompson’s The Making Of The Working Class, a lot of power in religion, it has gone away largely, 17th century Quakerism today, grows out of rebellion against the mainstream tradition, compared to Socrates, Diogenes, living in a pot, making friends with animals, making you impure, if you’re bitter you’ve probably been eating toads, he was a troll, he had some juice, Alexander, get out of my sun, serve him some chicken, I’m your servant Benjamin Lay, he’s a hobbit, doesn’t wear shoes, Socrates’ argument with religion, he’s treats these as forces in the universe to be understood, seems to be a religious zealot, the best way of being on Earth, he helps them kill himself, Benjamin Lay isn’t martyred, canceled a few times, he didn’t have any kids, she was 41 when they married, also a little person, ladies make nice more than guys, the women like Benjamin more than the men did, he was cute, a marginalized person, trying to convert people to the best way to be, his message is meant to be a universalist one, the records are all Quaker focused, these people took records, abuse a word, Christian ontology, understanding of the nature of reality, gotta get back to Eden, insufferable, speaking on behalf of the benign creator of the universe, a little more milquetoast than that, George Fox’s counterrevolution, colonizing project, associating, like a Mormon community today, he has the same values as we do, not a Richard Nixon Quaker, “friends”, Cornel West, a disarming technique, disingenuous sometimes, going along to get along, if he was alive today, spinning his own cloth, making his own shoes, he can’t go to Starbucks, red mollusc shells, vegan, honey was his sin, drank milk, the secret there is it is religious, not a codified religion, body purification, vegetarians are very out of fashion now, Gandhi, liberation from colonialism, liberation of enslaved people from their slave masters, wear vegan shoes, abuse of humans, and animals and bad, you’re bad because you’re eating meat, riding horses, flax, he loved his sheep, severing our relationship to our animals, clothing, meet, love, eat, a good connection we have to animals, unconscious grazing animals, not even gathering, just grazing, they have no baskets they’re naked, a concept not totally explored, the lamb’s war, during the English revolution, libertarianism dot org, a science fiction novel set during the English Civil War, the Baroque Cycle, the King was appointed by God, 18th Brumaire, the colours of the revolution that came before, man can make history but, deists, self-determination, genocide, free Palestine, from the river to the sea, Genocide Joe, a meaning, the word holocaust, bombing not burning, getting very literal, dip into the Book of Revelation, convince people within his own church, what other language would he use?, Quakers seem nicer than some, fewer slaves, involved in the slave trade, make other people do work for you, the relationship with alcohol, got a pass for selling alcohol, in this religious mode there is a lot of abstaining from things, veganism is not a political movement, an economic shift towards servicing this group, banning meat, the animal liberation front, setting off nail bombs, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, people willing to do crimes, do violence, seems legit, freeing pigs and they ate a guy, we want to eat them and they want to eat us, let them fight, powerful mammals that eat both meat and veg, the love wallowing, will get as fat as you let them, get pretty feral, in favour of the megafauna, a period of crisis, Bryan Alexander tweeted climate change, apocalyptic thinking, a lot of electricity around here, they’re expensive, it’s all a sham, if they really cared about climate change, the Nordstream Pipleine, fighter jets flying over Ukraine, the cynicism of the ruling class, all modelling, modelling what the future is going to be like, it never works, Alien Nation TV show, George Fransisco, predicting horse-racing and football games, too many variable, how important fear is in controlling people, what if the communists take over Vietnam, is that’s what’s happening, liberation from colonialism, try to stop horrible things, the fear factor, fearing God’s judgement will be on you, how god will judge us, any reply?, 17th century crisis, decreased growing seasons, it wasn’t planned starvation, bad weather for a little while and incompetence, people don’t build bridges properly, people do all sorts of terrible things, that’s a planning crisis, people making mistakes, squirrel away enough food, read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, very different narrative, temperature shifting, people are moving around, lots of reasons, the Sahel is expanding, supposed to plant your garden in May, now earlier in the season, April, fruiting plants, the systems we have now, dealing with lots of human beings moving around, dignity, beggar thy neighbour, immigration?, a factor in climate change, 1.5 degrees Celsius, killed a third of humanity, Tokogawan Japan, the Thirty Years War, unless you have no atmosphere like the Moon, by telling them facts, why would they stop, find out what’s true and act as best you can, El Salvador, do they have a bad government, very innovative things, crime is way down, meetings that are all filmed, independent prosecutor to investigate all of us in this room, a bitcoin economy, investing in bitcoin is not the plan, unable to daily transactions, debasing the currency, things getting more expensive, becoming less affordable, the populists wanted to devalue the currency, lower interest rates, we should be having jubilees constantly, how to get that to happen, always a bad idea, why would China want a cheaper RMB, pouring that money into the hands of people, mortgage length, being a gold bug, unfuckupable, we can’t just go out and find more gold to dig up, it doesn’t send people to the Yukon, a standard for trade, uses to many electrical cycles, Greece’s problem, whatever will be beneficial, show me one doing a good job, what is the benefit of switching to bitcoin, their bitcoin wallet is not seizable, where’s my quantitative easing, El Salvador, people moving out of the United States, where are they moving to, El Salvador, Costa Rica, cost of living, many Americans have moved to Canada, people are looking for better lives, where’s your stat for that, Belize’s currency was pinned to the USA, let’s help people and not hurt people, essentially just the gold standard, not an external commodity, taxation, tariffs, a form of taxes, forced labour, voluntary labour, buy war bonds, people would take their savings, unconvinced by, giving up your monetary sovereignty, many other countries don’t, isn’t that interesting, isn’t that another way, many countries use the United States the US dollar, a means of transactions, to promote exports, push employment in China, deficit spending, who is made the whim of these actions, affecting many people, University Of Central America’s public opinion, a successful experiment, it makes you independent, gold mining is very toxic to rivers, industrial gold mining, electrical cycles, causes global warming, coal, wasted cycles, people play games, it can’t be regulated, ban it, this is officially banned, it’s like torrents, data between computers, we’re doing that right now, China is a worker’s state, build socialism over the next 50 years, bitcoin within its borders, some Chinese man is kicking a dog, should a worker’s state be able regulate its currency, a stupid question, you cannot ban it, if we turned out all the computers and internet connections, an impractical idea, it’s stupid to question, Jesse’s favourite government, the B.C. government is pretty good, nobody is perfect, some is way worse, [Javier] Milei guy in Argentina, why would china want to ban bitcoin, it’s an alternative, a fiat currency is a good idea sometimes, get the good results, waving my hands too much, what’s BRICS going to do?, their own Euro?, officially banned, Cuba has three different currencies, trying to fix problems, North Korea has a big neighbour, you can only do so much, Cuban pesos?, good things and not bad things, less censorship, a climate crisis, you should pay attention to the climate, cynically selling, another Stephen King story, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Isaac Asimov wrote for Gallery, now just a porn website, a bunch of essays about the John F. Kennedy assassination, all deleted links, at what point are we all going to agree it was just the CIA, what people say in school, Jesse got in trouble, looking at her apple watch every few minutes, drinking from her Starbucks, too much nudity in some piece of art?, some sort of religious offense, annoyed, just be careful, all above board, our beloved comrade Benjamin Lay, the scholarship in this book, historical evidence and how we use it, Christopher Columbus, a historian made a claim, Columbus started the first transatlantic sex trade, facts that historians collect, Rediker is incredibly careful, Columbus’ journals, condemning the Spanish treatment of the Native Americans, this is the author’s claim, this is the evidence we have, interpretation, what makes history fun, understanding reality, a claim: President Biden is demented, we can document stuff and ask if it is a valid claim or not, All Slave Keepers Apostates, why did he leave his printing company’s name off of it, this guy was really important, one of the first Quaker dwarfs to really shake things up, a biography of Warren Chase, a religious nut later in life, free labour, making a more socialist argument for equal distribution of land, a pro-free love book, arguments against marriage, the model would be this book, when people write biographies, three volumes on Lyndon Johnson, H.P. Lovecraft, the challenge of a book like this, even if the claim is overargued, when he’s speculative he’s very clear, it becomes a little repetitive, a commonplace book, could be read backwards to forwards, reading Philip K. Dick, maybe Philip K. Dick had an autistic son, in a story like Progeny, something strange is going on here, latest Heinleins, it’s going to be the trial at the end, the dad had a basketful of money, I want a spacesuit, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat, Kip is probably Kipling, same ideology, stories to understand reality that aren’t about kings, what battles were won what alliances were made, semi-important, an interesting cross-grain, more about spiritualism, a dark path to go down, a traveling lecturer, spiritualism, utopian socialism, Wisconsin, homestead exemption, women and black to have the right to vote, personally upsetting, people are getting tricked, they wanna get tricked, a good chunk of humans, everything can be explained by history, harbinger of the Occupy Wall Street movement, 2011, an occupation of the Wisconsin state capital, a huge protest movement, slabbing, you take a comic book, a vhs tape, and put it between plastic, ridiculous and odious, everything is becoming valueless, when the new money comes, Weird Tales, December 1928, buy some meat or veg, that’s a radish sir, silly and amusing, more difficult to get scans, protected from rain, do they fill those slabs with nitrogen?, study deeper the process of slabbing, for some purpose, widely distributed, when the servers go down, the richness we need to be focused on, that’s how we improve our lives (and also land reform), another speculative commodity, alienation of just being a worker, bitcoin speculators, what creates value is labour, a medium of exchange, we demand trade in that product with this dollar, the scarcity in my car’s gas tank, bitcoin has no inherent value, at virtually no cost, all become gangsters, we gotta fight where we stand, personal reflection, somebody on Facebook, take personal offense, enjoys collecting old magazines, quality of copy, that “objective” standard pinned on the front, legit, small potatoes, a dying breed, a bunch of old white guys with white hair, not interested in the preservation of the hobby, collecting as a strange phenomena, comic book speculation, the rate of profit to fall, new investment properties, the art world, a big scam, these comics and pulp magazines have stories in them you can read, money laundering, you shouldn’t be upset, if a mink breaks into your farm and kills a chicken, rethink the concept of farming, when all these dudes die, warehousing, 300 books, we’re lucky to have what how few copies we have, drawing a copy of this, the next ship, and we found it in that city, very good at limiting his claim to what is known, people still talking about him guerrilla theater, anachronistic, he’s good, and so should Evan, a useful contribution, plainspeech statement about doing your homework, ye doing ye homework, ye should read a book on bitcoin, end of midsummer, Podkayne, Stranger In A Strange Land, the longer version, Farnham’s Freehold, then we go wild with Number Of The Beast, 2010, an expanded version, a trad sized, small sized but new, Ace, more on sex, Smith’s sexual revolution, a woman seducing jubal, all good, not good, I’m sex him up, the ending for Podkayne, restored original and the editor’s suggested one, the few stories I skipped, Puddin’ was the prototype for Podkayne, feels like a juvenile, frozen fetuses, younger sister frozen longer, indefensible, vocal minority, the fascism, you go do the math for your homework, natural deductive logic, symbolic logic, sounds good, completely useless, New York, general semantics, that’s bullshit, history of moral philosophy, the controversial part, a vague memory of Heinlein supporting the Vietnam War, Michael Moorcock, “Starship Stormtroopers”, rationalization, why they call him a fascist, Joseph Campbell vs. John W. Campbell, Mark Neocleous, anti-communism mixed with anti-englightenment, a little to friendly with bad ideas, theories, the reason you want voters to be veterans, makes sense in a certain way, warhawks who went to war, grunts, in cognitive decline, this war is different, mainstream media, the next six months will tell, bottom up focus, Star Trek is a navy, Miles O’Brien got demoted, there’s no infantry, there’s no marines, we’re going to focus on the grunts, ascends the meritocracy ladder, the movie, goes deep, fascist propaganda, not much in the book, almost no propaganda in the book, naming the ship Rodger Young, Fort Currie, M.I. by Rudyard Kipling, nice and short and illustrated, both worth reading, a little more imperialistic, Gunga Din, from grunt’s POV, slip himself into that mode, the navy is a bunch of braggarts, from a Pacific War, reinvade the Philippines, the navy did that, what the army was doing in new guinea, intermilitary rivalry, unsuccessful in China, 80% of the military budget, 1941, Will to do more history stuff, throw some non-fiction in once in a while, literary non-fiction, The Aeneid, The Iliad, The Odyssey in reverse, ends on a really nice noir note, so much good stuff coming on LibriVox, The Green Queen by Mike Vendetti, Margaret St. Clair is really good, a man who somehow does science on his girlfriend, a few weeks ago, a ton of Ace Double d-176, 131 pages, Mistress of Miracles or Puppet of Super Science, his atomic puppet was out of control, his brain child became a full grown Frankenstein, Viridis, radioactive world’s atomic shield, destroy the girl he loved, under another title, copyright, nobody gives a shit, pulled down even tho legit, arbitrary and evil system, mostly a short story by her, she’s a girl, she comes at things from a girl POV, she was witch, she liked gardening, a weird nudist California, raised dachshunds, informed by science fiction, a girl angle, Heinlein is trans but not a girl, would he have the rainbow flag in his bio, thinking about it a lot, wishfulfilment story, The Inhabited Men [copyright renewed B00000306198], she’s usually creepy, Meem, these people are immortal, immortality, they live again, standard twist on immortality, a cultural practice, a cult following, no kids, estates, pretty grabby, movies really propel that shit, Asimov’s reputation is in massive decline, dude, it can’t, The Fun They Had, you can have a tiny little influence, Margaret St. Clair will have her day in the sun again, Agent Of The Unknown, why is Ursula K. Le Guin hugely popular, compare her to John Brunner, when he was alive, like Octavia Butler but longer, fashionable to read black people, breadth of work, people aren’t as obssessed, a hoighty toit, Omleas, why liberals like playing with it, couple of randos online, 10-15 tweeters, stories published in men’s magazines, men’s magazines are full of riches other than boobs, a feminine perspective, Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton, in decline by the 50s, not as popular as you think she is, a Raymond Chandler novel?, August 11, looking at colleges in the midwest, North Dakota, scary?, strong science program, weather and geography, culturally, Fargo, pirate sister?, other sister, too much property, financial aid, a house that’s almost paid off, parent’s house, disown your daughter, no parents, no inheritance, readopt her, North Dakota wants people to stay, please don’t go, good schools, top 20 universities, until WHO?, The Loved Dead, The Journey of Joenes, The Not-World, Attitude by Hal Clement, The Triumph Of Evil, pirated audiobook of the Mad Max novelization, audiobooks of the damned, recorded in his car, Why?, What?, Huh?, When!?, Gentleman Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, illustrations as well, LibriVox, she’s a whore but she’s not explicit, you love her, she’s so funny, not stupid, not smart, everybody in it is stupid, an amazing comedy and very entertaining, racoon situation, around during the day, food available, a nursing mother looking for extra food, feed rats like Benjamin Lay, feral rats, in this very house, pet rats, tumors, it’s not humans that are cruel, the universe that is cruel, we live in hell, we have to make some compromises, not so glorious, predator eats prey, cute animal videos, extraordinarily picked out, videos of lions and people together, apex predators don’t usually go after each other, what cats can do, less domesticated, tigers, wolves, think less about wolves, equally present, fear controls people, coyotes, wary rather than concerned, fighting against fear, fear generated in order to control you, the biggest task, what if works so well, what if it is a tumor will, how they milk the moneys, you need that insurance money, open up a clinic, when you’ve got a lump, a passing thought, what if you get COVID will, many people died from COVID, what if the climate gets bad an people are unable to eat, getting worse, mitigation measures that line the pockets of people that are not you, current set of political leaders, fear is the way to do it, being the supposed incompetence with regard to the “invasion” at the border, get rid of the physical wall, new “biometric” border, in the digital business that never ends, a subscription to microsoft word, offer you servers, the CIA loves that, the NSA loves that, milk the cow, only cream for those in the know, ads in the feed, bussing, a legit fear?, not exactly what they want, also voting doesn’t matter, all hand ballots, counted electronically, scrutineers, the political parties are worried, stand around and observe the elections, human eyes, poll watchers, in the room?, Rhode Island, putatively non-partisan, retired people interested in helping democracy, so fucking boring, there’s no scandals, prevent communication of election results, because Ontario and Quebec, livestreaming, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, you are very bad, used to shut down the phones, if your legitimacy comes from democracy, a weird combination, vote strategically, any blue will do, prevent Trump, ensure Trump, Joyce Carol Oates, literally a professor a Princeton, not a political science professor, crazy and crazed, you have to vote and strategically, swing state, brainwashed, cutting off voting after 55, because cognitive decline, have you met these tweeters, less diseased when younger, Stephen King, drinking too much, too much cocaine, what was he angry at?, he’s come to love big brother, a Red Sox fan, a normal New England trait, Pet Semetary, a major cultural touchstone, names of actors, bookwriters, in the storehouse but not near the front, a less trustworthy voter?, swing in different directions, not vote, BC’s government is a lot better than it was, a toll on a bridge, get rid of bad policies, no more MSP payments for anybody, means tested, making changes to pharmaceuticals, dental, a problem with Justin, as close as they’ve got to leverage, Jack Layton, a moral figure, the liberals are sad when he dies, beloved doesn’t get you changes, romanticizing leadership, big mistakes aren’t being made, is the response solving problems, “my team”, how you end up like Joyce Carol Oats, orange man bad, bad president, in terms of killing people, a numbers thing, renegotiated the free trade agreement, the copyright law, after NAFTA, it sucks, less stuff that can be legally archived, legacies, a freeforall, millions of things, an active estate or an active corporation, people want to share it, it’s just about keeping your treasure and trying to sell it to some corporation, become grabby, you’re sixty years old your dad wrote a story in the 50s, selling to Hollywood, sold a public domain story to Hollywood, the studio lawyers aren’t doing their job, Adjustment Team, Adjustment Bureau, there’s no money in books, bro, aborted abortion that was the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams show, random pig people, some of them are unrecognizable, The Impossible Planet, a bersmirchment on Philip K. Dick’s legacy, his reputation, Screamers, Peter Weller smoking marijuana cigarettes, terminators pretending to be little kids, Second Variety, Jon’s World, two Doc Labyrinth stories, The Man In The High Castle sequel, his brain is too disorganized, George R.R. Martin big plan, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, strong opening scenes, he know how to pull off endings, as a ploter, his hour and a half sort of ones tend to be a lot of running around, the market is for novels, snobs, I read Hugo winners[novels], novelettes, snobbery, Mysterious Bookshop [Otto Penzler], incoming selections, big titles, paphlets with short stories, magazine, anthologies don’t get the love that novels do, collections, The Virginia Heinlein Estate, the 12 Heinlein Juveniles, sell them at Costco, massive incompetence, people are asking for them, those would be nice gifts to give, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, other things to read too, Tom Swift, $1400 for the complete set, riddled with typos, leather bound, shit covers, Jesse fact checking himself, $2200 or $4000 for the special edition, $1300 complete works, correspondence and screenplay, designed to do the opposite, milk the cows they already have, ebooks on Amazon, Mother’s Day, Heinlein fading out, mid-century science fiction, mostly by and for men, by men for boys, now for old men who have a lot of money, new books are for adult women, books in general, not just science fiction, some females read and some don’t, cultivate a group interesting in reading old shit, 2017, history for men, mainstream books, dad books, the YA getting published, adult women who like to be teen girls, 1.5K library, RAH’s fans are dying while we wait for the paperback edition, your herd is not doing well, very interested in what if we banned wills, after you die you don’t get to live any longer, you made claims during your life, you’re dead now, you don’t get to say what happens, rule people’s lives from the grave, focus on being alive, the estates for the estates, the Virginia Heinlein trust at the heat death of the universe, vague feeling we gotta help the wife, help the kids, what about the grandkids and their kids, a reactionary, supposed to be a slur, he’s a reactionary, the Jerry Pournelle book, if there was a revolution he’d be on the other side, recent Heinlein show, this doesn’t seem very fascist, a man of his time, some overlap there, he’s wrong about some stuff?, caught up on any word, opposing social liberation or reform, rightist, ultra right, blimpish, reactionary and radical, we operate in different intellectual spheres at time, communism is not left, MAGA communists, most people think it is left, personal freedom, do I think I should embrace personal freedom, we have to know our limitations, programmed robots that are self-programmable, gender dysphoria, is that a real thing?, a diagnosable thing, Dirty Harry, a man’s got to know his limitations, you have to know you’re unable to fly without a helicopter or jetpack, take hormones to get wings, feminine secondary sex characteristics, paint a mustache on your face, a female mustache, chemically enhanced, MRNA shots that, more [Ian M. Bank’s] Culture novels, change their sex at whim, Day Million, a post-human future, they travel to other stars, sorry, Paul, we’re not going to develop warp drive, where’s the evidence for that, the path to immortality, lots of counter evidence, Herland, fear death, don’t stop existing, more permanent, made no objections, stomp on your corpse, the community may object, fly here and kill me?, people getting conned, Weimar Republic days, pre-nazi-nazi days, no followup, Jackson Hinkle, a hormone clinic that got burned down during the Nazi period, lot of Nazis who’d gotten treatment there, a blue costume, he liked paintings and art, that’s not exactly trans, Ernst Röhm, gay Nazis, jstor, wikipedia, gay men under the nazi regime, officially ant-gay, exceptions, Netflixs, secret gay reactionary line of thinking, so-anti-gay because day, whoever smelt it dealt it, PUBG, a good way to interact with people not in Jesse’s intellectual circle, they died, blame other people for their deaths, sometimes legit, Old White Beard, speculating, he will type, an airdrop, crashed my airplane, he would have said what he was doing, blame is a really big mistake, avoiding responsibility and trying to fix problems, that’s not the way to win, stay out of the fight, maybe we go on to victory, a charge against being called a newb yourself, a long setup, an objective way of winning the game, it says on the screen, comparisons and strategies, people not playing the game to win, gain social acceptance, loser thinking, not good thinking, a reasonable point of view, people acting mistakenly, do you think blame is helpful to your life, a former employer, losing time on it, find out what the problem, was avoid that path, minimize that interaction, whatever current set of problems, Meg you idiot, what have I done?, now you sound like my therapist, how to prevent the milk from falling out, just an ice cube tray, low stakes, a carton of cream, burn the apartment down, just enough cream, in the blame game, resentment is something we should never have, how do we avoid it, avoid generation of resentment, can’t afford to have it be unpredictable, budget for that, earn or steal more money, cultivating behaviors that prevent resentment, expectations not fulfilled, what’s the opposite of resentment, being treated unfairly, you order french fries, enjoying my tea, they got eaten, mistakes were made, the bullet interacted with the child’s face, neurotic and consciousness, seems like you ate all the french fries, a big beef, am I resentful?, not as big a deal, a lot of myself in this short guy, makes trouble and annoys people, part of why he resonates differently, excuse me, give you my opinions about Trump or whatever, calling things out makes you unpopular, he liked books, down with Diogenes, public urination, normal dude behavior, how public is public?, in the public pool, for Jesse’s own well being, a hilarious situations, not say that, wait until after to tell one of their friends, tell their friend but not tell Will, a recipe for mistake, a lot of trivial conversations, shitpost in dms, jokes, more than at the surface level, I like her hair, that lady has nice boobs on this cover, #LegCling #HeadCLing, a wrestling magazine, a wrestling lady, articles about wrestlers, not exactly sex symbols, a realm culture, that culture was really interesting and very real, participatory, playing a coordinated tag game, wrestling, on TV, Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, fun, how much C.M. Kornbluth have you read, hard to understand, very smart, The Advent On Channel 12, mediated through Frederik Pohl, they colabbed, if there is a guy who can present, this is not an August Derleth H.P. Lovecraft situation, deep collaborators, friends too, from a young age, Pohl’s memoir, tight in the 30s, how goddamn smart this kid is, didn’t live very long, 4 pages, this will blow your socks off. Money was tight in the land, certain bankers who sate in New York, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, cursed be the day, feature length cartoon epics, nabes, devilishly splice, flop negatives, lo these beast and birds are like unto us in their laughter, mountebank, Poopy Panda Land, sandbagged by thousands of catchpenny engines, a child of my flesh, Remember boy, his heart was sore, addle the heads of children five hours, in the book of Space Merchants, spherical trusts, Motivational Research boys, the little bastards, untalented, Otto Clod, a sex fantasy for the more precocious girls, a liturgy of opening hymn, to coax and urge, sore amazed, this is the bleeding end, flipped their wigs, an old animator, from Winnie the Pooh illustrations back in 29, and Ben Graffis fired him, let it be so, a special film, enhaloed, Poop poopy poopy, it is definitely a tv first, he did go to the bar, a great gag, Who sate behind His desk, capital H, Poop poopy poopy, holy gee this is awful, an operator of marionettes, Poop poop poopy, 36pp, to even understand this story, the Mickey Mouse club and the power of Disney, Disney Plus, the bankers killed our poor C.M. Kornbluth, machine gun, driveway of snow, called out, he cut straight through all the bullshit, what is this phenomena and what does it mean, Disney is alive and well and means nothing except extraction, Annette Funicello all grown up, cuttin’ it right to bone, this is not impenetrable, that’s funny, he goes on to do something with it, too smart for his own good, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons, a powerful story, a dangerous story, misanthropy, went through some shit, see his friends slaughtered, the good war, mostly talk about the Nazis, one empire fucking around with another empire, what are we doing in Hawaii, or Taiwan, a little piece of Taiwan attached to mainland China, heat up a war between China and Taiwan, fuckin evil, people buy that shit, heatin the pan, but nothing’s cooking much in the bowl, so cynical now, just focus on Trump right now, grocery store.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #810 – READALONG: Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
The Fisherman, serialized in Analog, April 1961, a really good scene, fits the story, so ubiquitous, very surprising, pictograms in the text, this book is pretty hip, an Alfred Bester book, The Demolished Man, the mutants are an oppressed species, kinda derivative, Starman Jones, hitchhiking across country, hitches a ride, very Campbellian, Americana stuff, the whole premise is there to please Campbell, just an easy sale, lay bare sneaking suspicion, grew and grew and then waned, a retelling of the story of Jesus, the hero’s journey, goes into the outside, comes out of the cave, he’s a teacher, 10 pages, a Jesus thing, all that suffering goes on him, his great gift, people aren’t even happy with that, fishhook is big tech, Jonathan is Stone, Jesse is Finn, it has become corrupt, it is the church, the universities, corporations, Jesse is not Finn, the technology is great the organization is bad, the technology is bad, institutionalist stuck between the two philosophies, the word Stone, a guy named Peter, Godfrey Stone, a religious book, parallel scenes, lost in the willow island, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, goes to paradise, he’s got the Good News, also a science fiction story, ah but it is a fantasy, shownoting, 7 people talking about a Philip K. Dick story, thinking about Paul Weimer, raised under a religion, strong opinions, so strange, deeply flawed, compelled with the journey, very solid, repeat itself a couple of times, what a book!, compelling and interesting, The Goblin Reservation, gets the knowledge, the internal journey, all the monsters are real, physics are different, buy this artifact, bringing back knowledge from the stars, a different tone, this has serious conflict in it, conflicts easily overcome very quickly, that blows Jesse’s theory, hunting the monster, hidden agenda, subterfuge, intent to kill, a whole society that is full of resentment, what Paul would have thought of this book, where’s the US government?, absent, not a conspiracy, responding to reality, star signs, decorating the truck, Stars of David, moon and star of Islam, the worries of witchcraft, science has been discredited, if Paul were on the show, we just went through COVID, I am the science, big pharmaceutical companies, don’t do your own research now, counter-science propaganda, that’s just in people’s heads, how science actual is, science fiction books have been replaced by fantasy, a hard to classify book, in a science fiction magazine, such a hugely silly premise, what hard fantasy was, Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away, fantasy stuff is science, show me, the Campbell problem, Henry Kuttner’s Mutant, Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood, Dragon’s Island, hiding mutants, algae, weird book, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, basically The Terminator (1984), a religious figure, chipped tooth, he is that guy, doing Jesus style stuff, a cafe, quivering boobs, goes back in time again, the mob comes for him, the cosmic joke being played on him, scenes like that, the Joseph Smith story, also Abdul Al Hazred, the Mohamed story, the country, how people are in it now, company stores, trading posts, the propaganda, industries out of business, new tech all the time, disrupting the no-nothing non-Slans, making them vote for Trump, Fishhook is for profit, they’re cheap, a dystopia for non-psi people, a way for Simak to sell to John W. Campbell, big tech, chatbots, image generators, doing this for your good, the taxi industry, Uber, Bezos’ Gazelle Strategy, democratizing publishing, doing that too, creating a problem in order to provide a solution to that problem, doing both, city governments, drive up the price of the taxis, a license, non-licensed taxi, make people work for less, what we’re seeing in this book is a broken United States, exported all its industry, resentment in the countryside, business man, they outlive their value, what the book’s all about, an institution that’s outlived its usefulness, Parries, why did you think the word Parry was interested, an Alan Moore comic, to parry a blow, Providence, art by Jacen Burrows, disjointed and bad and also really good, a suicide booth, from Robert W. Chambers’ The Repairer Of Reputations, wordlessly, Peri, New York in the 1930s, outstanding, a guy is killing himself, the lover of Robert Black, a moth flying around, the moth lands on the suicide building, a term for the spirit of a person, Iranian?, parry, leaves his body, go to another planet, information, a sleeping bag that’s a wolf, the wine, tech that they bring back, how to build a fire, disrupt industries, the great premise of this book, other layer, priest, sheriff, crowd coming to kill him, happens again and again, seems to be book length rather than story length, reading into it, derogatory slurs, peepers in Alfred Bester, the Psi-Corps, The Demolished Man, a great book with lots of pictograms, the X-Men story, Campbellian, Bryan Singer made them the gays, also the gays, circling the image of the moth, derived from Chambers, basically death, your body is a chrysalis, leaving their body and going to other planets, coming back to a husk, the solution is the fusion of mind and body, the gross way, the pinkness, explain the pinkness, the logic behind it, a spirit, winged spirits, peris are exquisite winged spirits, mischievous beings denied entry to paradise, djinns and devis, similar in angels to look, spelling is different, pronunciation is the same, the girl who is a newspaperman is Simak himself, or maybe Murray Leinster, Mary Magdalene, with sin, blank slate, not his greatest novel, mighty themes, just fantasy that has no real bearing on reality, Simak’s philosophical digressions, cosmic or political, plot sucks, the countryside, Mexico to wherever, it is boring, that Leigh Brackett story, aliens, black people not being allowed to go into towns, Lovecraft Country, stolen valour, Lovecraft is evil and racist, the sequel has another stolen valour in the title, coloured, it’s like that, these people are ostracized, a paranormal ability, Philip K. Dick stories with mutants, witches Halloweening in the sky, are werewolves real?, having it both ways, dragons are people sitting on hoards, komodo dragons, science fiction and fantasy and metaphors, the ending, the most modern part of the book, the false flag operation, the center of every modern conspiracy theory, the terrorists, Hamas etc., this plot play out, conspiracy theory sphere, a very specific false flag operation, pretends to be a parry leader, the league of evil mutants, respond by kill all the parries, a very modern idea, here in 1961, a historical antecedent, false flags are real, happened during WWII, happened prior to WWII, propaganda and sets of beliefs, after a certain point people get behind it, Pearl Harbor, immediately turning to the Nazis, disputes, denying fuel, even whales, 19th century dispute over whaling, Roosevelt, operation shoestring, was god doing a false flag with Jesus?, you know what these humans need…, they’re gonna execute him, what he provoked instead is Christian antisemitism, at the party, on the run, where is this gonna go?, things happen again and again, this is all fun but how many canoe rides do we need, 14 or younger, 56 years ago, the main plot points, the first meeting with the pinkness, Hi Pal, I trade with you my mind, real trading, cat’s bag of tricks, searching within, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan, do science in the world then go to the cave and mortify themselves, triggered to Paul, Kim Stanley Robinson book, depressed by Aurora, Plato’s Cave, amnesis, draw knowledge out of forgotten memory, crisis situation, the drawing out, solving a crisis, remembering something, another crisis, the unmentioned book Stranger In A Strange Land, a bad character, Valentine Michael Smith, Forrest Gump (1994), stumbling through the story of Jesus, getting girlfriends, evil because popular, survive the Vietnam War, got it wrong, he follows the rules, uh huh, she gets aids and dies, buy in without thinking about it, fight Muhammad Ali, as if it, never go full retard, Tropic Thunder (2008), anti-intellectual and disingenuous, Star Wars vs. Sorcerer, the worst instinct in humans, Tarzan is an empiricist, and objection to rationalists, he can send people away, a true believer in Fishhook, working in Silicon Valley fucking everybody over, nice car, nice house, that’s the cost, then leaving, fixing a truck, leads to a transformation, just the things that you could carry, The Prince And The Pauper, Sullivan’s Travels (1941), riding the rails, comes back to Hollywood a changed person, the poors, a comedy movie to help them laugh, be like Jack London, a hobo, a communist, you gotta pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, bro, that’s why they’re going to Eden, with cats, killed their enemies, rapturing themselves, the promised land, going with axes, the Book of Numbers, Eden and Heaven are the same thing, the totality of your eclipse, some shitlibs, if they’re getting raptured by the eclipse, clutching their guns, deep in the liberal hivemind, do their guns get raptured with them?, leaving the non-peepers to rot, this book is bad because it doesn’t have a coherent thesis, come back for more tools, this is why this John W. Campbell push, a murder mystery, sparky stuff, science fiction is about the engagement of technology with humans, ideas, we do become mob-like, staunch Biden supporters, there’s a mass of mob that are low and stupid, and they should be left behind, riding the rails, mob justice, the interlude with the priest, a cool interesting book, more like Moses than Jesus, the idol being the machine?, money, these people don’t deserve to go to the promised land, the boomers, we could help you but we’re kinda scared to, the resort town, strange ideas from space, the Parry town, we sympathize, we’re scared, the kids help, the kids get to go to Jerusalem, to prevent a genocide, with The Skull, sacrificed at the end of the story, a broken, book, but still good, the solution is to transcend, when people think of Buddhism, one kind of Buddhism, he refuses to got to Nirvana, all the different symbols, which one works, all religions have some truth to them, the fallacy, a bad move, some can teleport, others can’t, can understand this concept from the Inferno planet, they’re homo superior, the x gene, all their powers are different, go bodily to Paradise, you’re never going to get to the stars, you wasted your time on science, tantric tai-chi, not anybody, it doesn’t give an explanation, paranormal skills in general, trynna sell a book to John W. Campbell, evil connotations around it, preach, it doesn’t got that extra step, an evil book: Beggars In Spain, some people are genetically better, they can study all day and night, this meritocracy, I’m smarter than you and you, fuck right off Nancy Kress, strong stuff about the resentment of the population, race and class, starts off superwell, a value judgement, somebody who does not believe in PK, hence he bought it, letters about this book?, didn’t buy into this peeper shit, super ubiquitous, it’s in Dune, an infection you have to deal with it, COVID, paxlovid, all in the news right now, do you have covid? is it covid?, the sniffles, sore throat, it’ll go away, it always does, an obsessive passion, not going out at night, late 70s, pegged as the 60s, the roads not being kept up, new tech, rolling into the future with new tech disrupting everything, the flyover country, the rustbelts, American RAH RAH industrialism, David Cronenberg, eXistenZ (1999), on the run chased by a corporation, David Lynch, noir element, neo noir, classic noir, femme fatale, she looks good, she knows how to dress, makeup described, hardboiled people, unearned, other parts he’s soft boiled, academic, muscular shit, worst Simak book?, he could have been Veronica Lake, writer brain upset, go against credibility, plotting, entertaining, he meets Paul on the road, the apostle, why is he going on the road, Simak has to recapitulate all these stories, carrying a load of something, a star machine, Shepherd Blaine, the good shepherd, a blankness, yellow, blah, clueing in, this is a religious book for sure, old paperbacks, lots of spaceships, Mischa Burnett tweet, tweet go wrong on him, he’s wrong about this but I like him, an arms race for cover art, authors should not participate, people are visual creatures, Alex PulpCovers, just make sure your name is on the cover, let the good writing get people interested in your writing, what got you interested in being a reader, you read books now, the theory of the shunt, not the line of least resistance, there’s cow patties to jump in, a book with a dragon on the cover, a little invisible guy, what is this book?, that’s The Hobbit, big pile of gold, becoming interested in reading, in the back of his mind at all times, an autodidact, a janitor at a university, university library, a university education, they rejected him, he’s not one of them, self-publishing, very different ideas, Small Worlds, a blue planet, a yellow corona, Atlas Of Bad Roads, terrible covers, he’s wrong, given something think about him, maybe it is a great book, the cover does not code at all, spaceship on the cover, a broken promise, if you’re not buying Analog, an old truck on the cover, a good cover, an advertisement, a collection of short stories, good marketing, objecting to a different thing, an arms race, why are arms races bad?, who’s going to get hurt in this war, justifying, an ill conceived tweet, only reaching his existent fans, a mixture of good rating and bad ratings, Jonathan’s books have good covers, cover idea, another anthology, describing an illustration, raise money on kickstarter, Sword & Scandal, violent and sexually explicit, an ampersand, scantily clad or nude, a male barbarian, female barbarian in chainmail bikini, miss a trick, grab her by the chainmail bikini pussy, hard explain in an image, looking shocked, Hillary Clinton face, topless is the safer way to go, people understand what is going on, harder, an awkward, big smile, in triumph, a funny image for the cover, Salome, old men in a tree?, the head of John The Baptist on a silver plate, naked and terrified, Susanna and the Elders, Book of Daniel, hot woman, princess/queen, hideous shriveled wizard, trying to explain, grab her by the chainmail bikini, a proper anthology, audiobooks, he had a bad take, a very soft dunking, bookbinding, a pile of loose paper, Endless Summer is on audiobook, Bad Dreams by Mischa Burnett, Dark Fantasies, a skull, Mischa is more popular than Jonathan, Bing chat, mirror mirror on the wall…, wearing a wimple, am I still pretty?, Catskinner, Tommy Patrick Ryan’s reading of A Present For Pat by Philip K. Dick, dialogue heavy, nice and short, almost no mistakes, time and half, read the text, listening while cooking, readalong, hikes, motivates, jogging, exercise every day, Jonathan is pretty fit, who is the more successful author, purely quantitative, the electors in the electoral college, grand wizards, grand readers, big fat readers, reading all the time, hope to interest, Exiles To Glory by Jerry Pournelle, hard science fiction, how many minutes?, 216 pages, about 5 hours?, High Justice, Birth Of Fire, technical and financial challenges, 8 hours 33 minutes vs. less than 6 hours, this is gonna be a great book, cleared cache, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism, socialism!, it has never worked, that thing that never worked?!, a social safety net, no money, heaven is socialism, falling through the cracks, getting rid of property, that guy (Martin Geeson), Willis not reliable, Evan Lampe for Starman Jones, R. Murray Gilchrist, very strange, very gay, I’m here as you summoned me, my son has to live his own life, back to France, 15 years old, go away for a few years, keep the money in the family, rich people problems, the aunt is a lich, proto-Thing On The Doorstep, ornate beautiful writing, a yellow 90s sort of story, humanskin gloves, murderess ancestor, they symbol of the stone dragon, plot wise vs. tone, not Clark Ashton Smith level, very yellow nineties, The Crimson Weaver is even gayer, tricked into going into a forest with a spider woman in it, abducted, Dungeons & Dragonsy, Will was a little mad at Jesse, no drama there, a manic side, a podcast, he can’t work a regular job, excited about selling books, misunderstanding how popular books are, media mail, servicing his hobby, retail space isn’t that expensive, foot traffic, a book town, incredibly dense, half an hour from Vancouver, the Palisades, across the river from New York City, you can’t do everything, write another book, two thing, people who’ve done it, Cirsova, help and notes, The Journey Of The Joenes, Journey Beyond Tomorrow, a tiny Pacific island, Sheckley, Mindswap, a short story guy, novels, short stories have to be good, some situations where novels are better, more crappy novels, short stories are the best form for science fiction, filling pages to get to that wordcount, the writers groups, hitting my wordcount, a crafted piece that’s exactly the right length it needs to be, a piece of art, a funny tweet, people who put PhD in their bios, that’s who they are, that’s their identity, you need to know they’re better than you, I need to be a writer, I want to be respected, written by a janitor or by a university don, might be a great writer, cover care abouter, Alex for The Not-World, pirate website, ebook guy, 10 Story Western, who cares?, getting things right is not important, Thomas Burnett Swann, Day Of The Minotaur, authors starting with the letter T, Where Is The Bird On Fire?, pretty obscure, new dude, Wayne Robbins, Their Flesh Is Soft And Tender, he’s an 80 year old, wow!, a Vietnam vet, left his leg in Vietnam, Mike Vendetti, The Greatful Corpse, Dread Exile by Paul Ernst, The Door Of Doom by Hugh B. Cave, Nameless Offspring, Fafhrd and Gray Mousers, Corpseless Coffins, come within reach, desolate miles of barren country, the native Britons, Murder Puppets, Ray Cummings and his wife, next time, we can be done, adult books, now it means stupid writing.

The Fisherman by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis