The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – READALONG: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #790 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany

The SFFaudio Podcast #790 – The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, read by Ed Humpal (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (34 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
1908, and other stories, great sword and sorcery books, Brian Murphy, a Penguin edition, In The Land Of Time, some fantasy role playing games, fantasy tropes, an intelligent sword, a sword with a soul inside, prose poetry, how to make writing better, at every opportunity, consonance and assonance back to back, very distinctive, so dense, so much, you need the space, take them in more slowly, 34 minutes, feels like a couple hours, a spell that he’s casting, repetition, ideas, who is I?, he’s the dreamer who is proud of his dreaming, sit before my fire asleep, draw away from the face of god, is this dreamer god?, the world that he’s spinning up, somebody bigger than time, somebody omniscient, the city, these dudes from a long time ago, everything’s dreamy, a nice and soft hard shift, thieves going to be executed, check out the city as spies, thieves, criminals as the protagonists, some sort of sense of honour, The Highwaymen, The Wonderful Window, he can almost smell the bakers and spice merchants, a hint of the smell, sat down by the fire, a nice dog at his feet, a long list of heroes, don’t forget Welleran, Young Iraine, a depth of history, Mermina, somnolence, a memory mumbley word that you remember, a Dreamlands, centered in a city, barbarians around, sing the praises of Welleran weaponless, protected by these old heroes, Roald, this thing that poets do, claim to be visionaries, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, smoking opium, a knock on the door, the vision was gone, after the fact, the game these poets are playing, are they?, part of the fiction of the story?, he’s playful, jumps out the window and runs down the street, The Hashish Man, it was not that at all, I do it with hashish, I know Bathmoora well, different brain, doing it as a poem, composed in the way, not so much about meaning as it is about feeling, The Irish Times review, baffling, strange but captivating, Seejar and Sejar-Ho, virtually identical to each other, a little dialogue, one-act plays, servants, listen to the piano, let’s put on a play, four characters, roll through the story, some resonance here, Dan Carlin’s latest, Twilight Of The Aesir, the Byzantines in 941, the Keivan Rus, Finnish, Oleg, Ayegar, was a great city, they think of themselves as Romans, 1000, years later, Constantinople, Istanbul, as if we had gone to heaven, unbelievable, full of heroes as it once was, field a thousand ships and 40,000 troops against the city, the leadership digs out mothballed wooden ships, animal heads, open mouths, unleash Greek fire, they didn’t know that was a thing, that was invented 300 years ago, they still had the tech, ended with a treaty, won the battle, the plot of this, an old city, decadent, tired sleepy citizens, wary barbarians, are they as tough as they say they are?, no reference, weird awesome fantasy, resonated deep, this change that occurred, the place that everyone fought for 100 years ago, like the heroes did in the past, lamenting how evil the sword was, they would have lost their city, people have funny ideas, interesting coming from the narrator, the interesting comment from the god, the heroes existed to defend this place, it doesn’t even occur to them to defend the place, once they have victory, this sword is evil, what was the alternative, this generational change, the change in values, resonates today for obvious reasons, floating around in our culture right now, the whole city was the product of the sword, the swords that wanted all of this, an anti-war story, the men that never would have lived, the gardens that didn’t grow, if you go back further when they built the city, the wish of the city or the wish of the sword, anti-war in the face of destruction, a very fascinating idea, very conflicted, I’m not supposed to like the people, the ending would be the surprise, Lovecraft, The Doom The Came To Sarnath, a civilization they genocide, salamander people from the moon, didn’t know much about fire, become incredibly decadent, a possible reading, if we lean on the idea that the sword has a soul, not to make friends, to kill, on page 30 of the PDF, drew round about him the huge red cloak around him, and and now, Roald’s dreams to him to the sword, in thy hand, it is a good sword to hold, take up the sword of Welleran, cajoled, we can lean on this idea, doing the defense of the city, enstatued, sword under glass, the unarmed singer, patrols the city, are they wiser than we think they are?, Maissa’s right, taken them back, defending the city, the lament at the end, another line, about paradise, like a warm fire, a great anthem, a stillness full of lights, what art thou thy shimmering thing, layers on, blending the characters, the god of the story, really interesting, how Dunsay led his life, 1918ish, the Irish Civil War, pro-British domination of the Irish, but he does it, a poet and a hunter and an appreciator of many things, the hero reborn, he’s the guy who takes up the sword when no one else will, part of the story is hilarious, a series of heroes, their souls leaving their bodies, their horses are freed, inspired by a dream, stay under glass, held off for 300 years by rumour, look they’re still there, confirm that their not dead, the robbers were wrong, they touch the statue, puts his eyes on the cloak, touches the mane of the horse, the colours of the different materials, alabaster, marble, sable, jasper, Clark Ashton Smith, the beauty of the material, a message under there, what kinda enemies, Lord Dunsany’s gonna get canceled, it’s not London, has resonance for all people, the slaughter, we blame the sword, it doesn’t wash clean of blood, even Roald is possessed, have they overcome their decadence, an outside spirit inside of themselves?, the right lesson, heroes will always rise, young Irane, double letters, two Ls two Os, a new thought came into the heart of Merimna’s people, when England needed to rise, the spirit of the people rose up in the personification of Churchill, why did Welleran wear the great red cloak, the way of Welleran, back to his mother’s house, almost a religious fervor, patriotism, a more general reading, holding of the sword, dropped the swords, the right reaction, right to be horrified by what they had done, they did what they had to do, simulation theory, NPCs running around in a simulation, way ahead of himself, the good and correct thing, defend the empire against the barbarians, lazy or dreamers, languorous, goes to the sun, it’s cute because it wants to kill, the reason it’s pawing, excited by the images, this is the leader we need right now, being pad to shill, like we’re all addicts, WWI, The Bowmen by Arthur Machen, charge into machinegun fire, we still have our fingers, this is a true story, we must believe in this story, no, it’s a true story, it has to be true, we have god on our side, angels of our ancestors, that’s crazy, they need it to be true, when signing up for the army, Audie Murphy, these classic wars, picking up the same uniform, pure fantasy, where do these heroes come from, he becomes Welleran, Roald would be added to the list, Arthurian legend, we need FDR to come back and fulfill his fourth term, mythological heroes are going to return one day, the puritan work ethic, they’re kind of lax, they’re sleeping too much, moved by this story, parallels today, what do people say?, a difficult week, Jonathan’s mom had a stroke, rehab, with stuff this old, other than Brian Murphy on us, a famous name from so long ago, only as an old writer, so fantastic, there’s no genocide, a defense of the city, he kisses the sword with his lips, battle sweat, more like possession, nervousness, something he needs, keeping it close, our hands can hold swords no more, go among dreams, take the old swords, the mouth the the ravine, make him take my sword, they were all tricked too, the city is hot, the gods made the city hot, go out now into the desert, for fear of the desert robbers, sent up a fever over it, what was the alternative, they’re going to sack the city, rising them from slumber, rise up and protect yourselves, coming from the right place, deceived or pushed into doing this, violence, under barbarian rule tomorrow, it is confusing, it all is ambiguous, kinda like gods now, the beautiful buildings, the architecture, an excellent point, defend the architecture that the heroes love, Roald and his mom, every page has gold on it, invoking the name, aka I’m Welleran, the savage lusting sword that had thirsted for a hundred years, warm blood all about it, the joy of the swimmer, living for long in a dry land, Welleran lives!, the exulting, the sword singing softly to itself, violence and lust for blood, poured into the depth of the darkness, gleaming blue, gleaming red, the whole battle, thrust through, they blame it on the weapon, really quite choice, it makes sense, in his castle, Morton Drax, ancestors, popish plot, sitting in his house, dog at his feet, drowsing, a burglar at the window, he’s got a pipe wrench, one of his ancestor’s guns, shoots the bad, rifle, what have you done?, bad gun!, sleep soundly, not that this is a true story, decadent guy, armorial trophies, a morality there, not everything ideal all the time, when it is necessary we reach for the sword, fighting for the wrong side, where does his title come from, anglo-irish lord, aristocratic, beautiful architecture, subhuman, he has to, Star Trek, the Irish reunifcation of 2024, proven wrong once and for all, Roland, rolled in, all one, he does roll out like a Transformer, transformed, The Song Of Roland, 11th century Frankish Challenge story, the Stephen King book, the poem, more innocent, more Roald than Welleran, sounds nice, the most jarring of the names, rhymes, they pair together, no sense of an ocean nearby, surrounded on four sides, this is not how great cities come to be, Paris, generally they’re coastal cities, London, Russia has no natural boundaries, what Russia does, create a buffer, back and forth, conquering the neighbouring lands, everything taken back, historical parallels, Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard, one of the historical sieges of Vienna, Red Sonja has a real sister, the star of that story, mostly swords still, becoming mercenaries for a decadent city, for the love of battle and personal reasons, Rogatino, contemporary with Conan, Hyrkania, sometimes Russia sometimes Ukraine, sounds like a guy’s name, sounds like a British name, Wayland, Weiland, sounding eastern, playing some sort of game in dreaming up this city, how civilization is, the truth of that story, making a scapegoat of the sword, blaming, not have the equipment taken by the barbarians, the deep ravine, horses let to roam free, a wound that won’t close, on his way to the deep ravine to die, his soul leaves his body but he continues to ride, bones in the ravine, there’s something in there, Roald touches the horse and the man in the same way, seeing with your hand, dark, night, they’re all asleep in the Dreamlands, the story of the horse, pastiche of dreams with a simple story, bowed to the ground, horse’s hoof, poetry poetry poetry, quite cold, the terrible hand of Welleran, he was marble too, the figure of fear, heard the guard, you may sing of Welleran, still restless in the night, naught can save your city, the two spies went back alive, were wont to go back, hid themselves away, that only live a day, so beautiful, pure poetry, the story is solid, how come you don’t write like that Jonathan?, everyone has their own unique voice, classic satire, we can appreciate it, I would have preferred to have a different style, die and be reborn, we can fake it, who else could have written this?, lost in eddies different, Lovecraft’s agenda is always pointed, resentment built into it, often based on being poor, it’s not fair that I’m poor, cutesy and cuddly axes, he is traumatized not at all, a dark sense of humour, he turns the light away from the dark scenes, Clark Ashton Smith is sex mad, a shapely shape, incubi and succubi, like a Weichsel story, understanding who the writer was, trauma or non-trauma, debates about AI art, a this year thing, the fascination people have with the artist or the writer, born into wealth and privileged, born to illiterate parents, different experiences, ai traumas, aristocratic literature, what is the struggle that Dunsany had?, live up to ancestors, equal to almost every task, immediately becomes poor, Poe is easy, tries to woo every woman on the planet, chessmaster, fencing master, officer, lord, hunter, winner, I like art, I like funny cute stories, isn’t this cute?, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, head wound, living a pretty great life, invented some game, a healthy dream life, extremely fertile imagination, Jorkens stories, kind of a joke, Herman Melville, supergay but not traumatized by it, George MacDonald, children’s literature, for adult amusement, people make kids read classic works, Black Beauty, a reflection of his room, trying to see each other, Alice In Wonderland, C.S. Lewis?, Lewis Carroll, it was never for children, The Hobbit is for children (8 year olds), The Lord Of The Rings is for slightly older children (10 year olds), very rich, compare Dunsany to Tolkien,

TOLKIEN: Dunsany, your stuff is not rigorous enough to really tell a story in a secondary world one needs a new language, a backstory to explain the gods and demons to haunt a world, a rich tapestried backstory for world building [runs off to Silmarill for a while]

DUNSANY: I like the sound of these words together and so I built a city, dome on dome and pile on pile.

[CLARK ASHTON SMITH: ok, but what materials are that city made from? what chalcedony? what ebon fanes? and in those fanes what arabesques whose numberless, unwonted hues..]

what day of week each Hobbit is where vs. a sketch, out and onto paper, next story, a stylistic choice, the dreamlike quality, Aragorn son of Arathorn, ephemeral, out of fashion and not as well loved, why had he picked that one, on the list, the lasting impact, the sword that has a soul, a whole Elric series, Stormbringer, Audio Realms, what a beautiful ones that was, adding background stuff to a reading, that’s where Wayne June came from, his readings of Lovecraft, very scarce, very expensive, difficult/impossible to adapt to other media, would make a great cartoon, a great comic, do a lot of his words, lots of voice over narration, not having their words, how they fucked up the latest Dune, Jessica has to cry all the time, see their eyes brighten up, you can see the hands crawling up the statue, the reaction in the eyes, not the mode we’re in right now, expressionism in film, somebody could do it, on Prime, dramatic interpretation to individual scenes, frame the story, My Talks With Dean Spanley (2008), Star Wars, based on other films, film noir, short stories or novels, the exceptions are very rare, Casablanca, based on a play, somebody saw a movie once, not looking at the original material, Harlan Ellison essay, The Words In Spock’s Mouth, create in totality, “fans” such as yourself, slave for three months, god knows who all else, politely told to screw off, a fleeting commodity, the credit he gets when the segment is show, how could you be so ignorant, we all start off that way, this one has a dragon on the cover, that one has spaceship, they’re both good covers, somebody’s name, match the name not the picture, a million axes to grind, when do most people stop reading? as children, people are still reading (their phones), reading comments, the most striking weird thing of our age, a chat window rushing up the screen, thousands of children saying lol, what about blah blah blah trigger word, dip into the river, the writing vs the reading, the quantity of the writing vs. the quality, can’t fathom it, the medium specifically of streaming, lol and emoji and trigger word, a question that gets lost, every medium is completely different, you can record a livestream and make it a podcast, a livestream and a youtube and a podcast, all the same content, why are we doing this weird thing of caring about old books, we used to be normal for hundreds of years, now we’re something else, found ourselves invaded by barbarians who are incomprehensible, this person was honest enough to oput his ghost writer on the cover, Peter Mansbridge has a new book out, on TV for 40 years as a newsreader, credibility with the boomers, the dominant medium, no real trauma, you know why he’s writing, he thinks he’s an artist, satisfaction out of his shitty life, very good question, for pleasure?, its fun, wealthy writers are very rare, the wealthiest journalist, A. Merritt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, some ghost writing for very rich people, typical of rich people, writing is a helluv a lot of work, he writes poetry, this is a story, read it as a story, not just look at the sound, images, telling a story in a very short and beautiful space, paying for music, lower class to want to make money off of your writing, he didn’t need the money, driven by pleasure it seems, a story that tells itself, he wrote some novels, Books Of Wonder, The Gods Of Pegana, chamber plays, he wrote those, what the aristocrats did, a sinister motive, be popular at parties, [The Idler] the ads for it are for very expensive cars and airplanes, one page stories, eligible women to marry and what their titles are, a diversion, the receiving of the paycheck, a pursuit of people needed money, he put his name on it, so did Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, sex poems, he has the talent, he likes what his pen can do, compare Dunsany and Robert E. Howard, an axe to grind, barbarism vs. civilization, a decorative axe, an evil axe, Dungeons & Dragons, even sting gets a name, legends behind every sword, name one of Conan’s swords, any sword, any horse, making money, all up in the air, that aloofness doesn’t resonate, we’re there, Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, Eric Brighteyes, The Ship Of Ishtar, The Tower Of The Elephant, Dragon Moon by Henry Kutter, Jack Vance, L. Sprague De Camp, Poul Anderson, The Tale of Hauk, Karl Edward Wagner, David Drake, Imaro, pocket protector tells you his era, glasses case, a horrible drunk, a keg of beer in his office, a mane of hair, died from alcohol, an editor at DAW, rediscover forgotten authors, have it as Howard wrote it, concluded in the early 2000s, In A Lonely Place, horror writers, the Tennessee woods, inspired by The King In Yellow, Sticks, Ramsey Campbell, $25,000 a year, $100,000 yearly, property in Jamaica and Ecuador, the handcuffs and the straitjacket and the scullery brush, Travels by Michael Crichton, 15 hours-ish, horrible thanksgiving, they’re lying, the hospital kidnapped me, little writing done, life problems, life gets in the way, back to writing short stories, where the money is, asking about Ace, so long ago, the first thanksgiving and Peter Mansbridge, the propaganda for Thanksgiving is deep in your bones, pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie, slavery, slaves were often cooks, adapted African meals, yams, to serve to their masters, this is cultural appropriation, abolitionist propaganda, toiling for pumpkins, a replacement for the sweet potato pie, well no actually, fighting over this, people don’t change, the symbolism has gone but the food remains, bulgogi, sweet savoury sauce, bought it at Costco, some soup, sweet soup, tasted like plum, Chinese and Korean students, immigrant area outside of New York City, poor Maissa, not a big rosewater fan, put it in rice, dried roses in tea, a very specific Persian, that’s not a feature, Korean bbq, they cook their own food there, moms are always cooking food, a cooking culture, kimchi fridges, cook it on the table, lot and lots of funny, skycat to Cave Girl, Fury by Henry Kuttner, Islamic Development Bank, isdb, May – July 1947, C.L. Moore’s husband, you could only renew in one year, they don’t do it anymore, it’s not libel if it’s true, to bankrupt your opponent, already bankrupt, they’re dumb, having Shambleau renewed pissed Jesse off, Tryst In Time by C.L. Moore, Fury, Carry Me Home, Heir Apparent, Sky Is Falling, Beauty And The Beast, Voice Of Lobster, prolific authors, written under pseudonyms, collected it later, every single story written by Kuttner and Moore, Robert Silverberg, novels on LibriVox, Hemple, he got every word right, a straight reading, it became transparent, limp, a more lilt, had to read it that way, a sound story, The Fairy Chessmen, they did renew a lot, 1947, Harry Harrison, Hell Bath No Fury, 1947, Street & Smith, Lawrence O’Donnell, cigarette ads, first paperback edition, the most popular writing team in science fiction, it’s public domain, other options, FadedPage, Gutenberg, two things that are happening, the library google scan system, if disproven, sue me if you think your right, allows people to share, the DMCA, a funny situation, SickMyDuck.narod.ru, etexts of almost all of Philip K. Dick, English and Russian, C.L. Moore, Judgement Night, 1943, a novella, locked away for all the eternity, until the empire collapses, January 2025, compare statement to reality and call Jonathan a prophet, money debasing scheme, that’s like the petrodollar, students were studying hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, a James Bond novels, part of the problem, they’re good books, the original Epic Of Gilgamesh, a really thin book and half of it is the introduction, Ian Fleming, Live And Let Die, Property Of A Lady, From A View To A Kill, From Russia With Love, has to be on a Canadian server, science fiction adjacent, Fu Manchu, Doctor No, robot hands, a dragon, sexy, cool, half German half Chinese, a sovereign citizen, damaged eyes, an indomitable will, a Robert E. Howard villain character, Ray Cummings, The Girl In The Golden Atom, aliens who want to kidnap all the human women, the Tama books, the serialization, to super science, Fantastic Adventures, viking queen in shining armour, Eskimo dudes, wizard staff, amazing covers, Robert Bloch, what Sam Moskowitz did, for reintroduction later, Famous Fantastic Mysteries anthology, the best of the Munseys, a short story or something, a poem, something nice, giant lady riding a seahorse, pewter pasties and u-boat in the foreground, lady wearing a red mask, eagle on her head, riding a Pegasus, and a pistol in her belt, giant ladies of the sea and submarines, tiger by her side, guy with colt automatic facing her, she’s topless, ladies riding wooly mammoths into cover, add a little lust, draw people in, little people, fairies or leprechauns discover giant lady in waterfall, Lady Godiva at the end of the rainbow, epic fantasy about Lady Godiva, epic in scale, husband’s a lord, ride through town naked on a horse, lock yourselves inside your houses, Circe Lannister style, covers herself with her hair, all of her parts, one guy named Tom, Tom peeps out the window, the etymology of peeping Tom, struck blind, needs some filler, flesh coloured body suit, Lady Godiva of Coventry, Maureen O’Hara, James Alderdice, David J. West, Run If You Can, Owen Dudley, so love, but so bad!, meets a water sprite in a ditch, forced to confront her with a luger, communist pirate radio program, that would be neat, that picture tells a whole story, it raises a question, the story answering the question fulfills the promise of the cover, design based covers, they don’t raise a question, the AI art is getting pretty good, doesn’t generally raise a question, match the cover to something that they wrote, the first thing the reader sees is the cover, that’s a promise, this is what’s in side, quarter pounder with cheese, now it needs a cover, is that what’s in here?, the answer is yes, oh and now I need a cover, psuedoscientific ideas, images and text and fonts, based on a philosophy, illegitimate, on and island with limited electricity, the cover of The Hobbit, what’s this about, will you read it to us, damn, that was good, Tolkien books, it has to be an image, a promise of what is inside, even romance novels, a farm, a fence, a guy riding a horse, communicate what genre the book is, a fence and silo, no rocket in the book, gothic romance, Fabio on a horse, misreading the romance genre, romance readers are more loyal than anybody else, girl porn, we’re ripped off in the science fiction, a book about robots, about an autistic lady, they depict something that’s in the book, but not the tone, the best thing about it was the cover, slapdash, can you make it a novelette, reads like a summary of a story, wasted time, an argument against the illustrated cover, old fashioned books, wanting read a modern book, the ideal reader, some people bought them, wanted to be in the in group, Barack Obama’s autobiography, not secure in your identity as an adult, you think he’s contemptible, retarded or secure in their adulthood, no good comics anymore, big pot belly, curly long hair tied into a pony tail, they only collect the covers now, Red Sonja, I should be reading this, getting pissed off, the writing is not Howard, very John Buscema, Jim Zub doesn’t have the problems Robert E. Howard, Dunsany doesn’t need trauma, romantic poets, nobody reads them, having a connection to nature, hard to penetrate poems, The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, either a guy sitting outside a lady’s house, sneaks into the house, looks at her dead body, the trauma of death, beautiful dead woman, very accessible, what makes something really hot is that it’s out now, these pulp revivalist, The Cromcast, his trauma is in the stories, an axe to grind, five or six things, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit And The Pendulum (a terrible story), suspense piled on, well done for what it is, Morella is way better, what axe they have to grind, anti-catholic prejudice, what does he linger on, the walls are closing in, covered in rats, The Raven, Annabelle Lee, The Bells, Berenice is pretty nice Chris Sempter (Poe Museum guy), a harsh grating, the fiery walls, fainting into the abyss, Toledo, we don’t know anything about his sins, saved by the protestants, he’s an atheist, always talking about angels, consecrated her body to worms and heaven, guy loves his wife, he loves her beautiful smile, smashes her teeth out, symbolic of her, monomaniac, now she’s toothless, a very Jonathan story, the four paragraphs that are left out of later publications, this story got a lot of negative attention, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, heat brings warmth and warmth brings fire and fire is what this magazine needs, proceeded to do that, writing outrageous stories designed to provoke, put a nude lady on the cover of you book, argues for being outrageous, to sell stories, self-doubt sometimes, go along to get along, pick a genre, memorize the plot beats, followed that advice, don’t trust the experts, 20 books to 50k, that’s a thing there, bragging how much money you make in a month, aquatic animals, on Facebook, not legitimate, a specific graphic, 2 figures a month, a prawn, a lobster, a trout, their analogy is the broken thing, salmon, dolphin, whale, kelpie, kraken, whoever wrote this list is a bad writer, they’re all bad writers, chasing big dollar amounts, propaganda like this, streamers, you know this is streaming right now, thousands of people who want to be streamers and 100 that make a living at it, I’m locked in the house and I like games, free money, those donations are half for me and half for them, sharecropper, tips and tricks to self-publishing, spending more than that on Amazon ads, bragging about their net, bestsellers, The Empyrean #2 – Iron Flame by Rebecca Yaros, 119,000 ratings, campus romance, new Hunger Games book, continue on the path, any good covers on here?, you’re not supposed to stand out you’re supposed to fit in, all a scam, partially a scam, Michael Connelly, Nora Roberts, Suzanne Collins, girls like adventure stories, choosing dresses and choosing boyfriends, readers are getting tired of the series, a certain kind of reader who is autistic, dragons on the cover, what if you just become obsessed with dragons, Anne McCaffrey’s career, all of the Harry Potter series, a new character, Harry Potter rip-off books, readers who just want to read dragon books, to serve the readers, autism is on the rise?, these are the only people left?, other forms of distraction, traditional publishing has moved away from commercial fiction, being very cynical about how to pitch their books, respectable, using their real names sometimes, an executive, Roger Corman was very cynical, his Poe adaptation, Death Race 2000 (1975), invented the formula, young boys will go to the movies with their older brother, girls will go to the movie their boyfriend, a date with a spare, target to your movie to the girlfriend, the target is the older brother, PG-13 was the 80s, gaming society, all these formulas, commission an artist to make a movie poster, which movie do you want to see, Roger Corman movie list, Machete Maidens, Teenage Cave Man, The Fast And The Furious, Star Wars style ripoffs, Alien ripoffs, his Poe movies with Vincent Price, this monologue, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), a lot of Cannes stuff, a very good artist, a lot of the pulp is the same way, people like trains, a magazine of train stories, artists, the artistry, they’re on the internet, all using pen-names, have integrity, going against the grain of what has been expected during the self-publishing era, unprofessional, oh he’s doing wrong, becoming whales, they’re the lobsters, the Elantris guy, do what he does, the Salt Lake City guy, Brandon Sanderson, not broken the way I need to be to like them, his interests, being forthright and sticking to his guns, like Stephen King: whatever the empire says, actual banned books, using copyright to prevent the spread of Rage, Spielberg re-edited E.T., I regret having made that decision, successful, 1941 (1979), the Battle Of Los Angeles, The Goonies (1985), Richard Donner, written by Stephen Spielberg, An Adventures In Babysitting (1987), asian guy says, and you can’t do generic asian, narrowing it, it never was a great idea, Tarzan takes the feminine world, needs to be rescued, he’s the Miranda, The Tempest, Rapunzel in the tower, Jane is the Prince Charming, Sheena is a gender flip of the gender flip, The Jungle Book, Green Mansions, a gender flipping website, flips Conan to Conana, Pirates Of Ersatz, girls are capable of being inseminated and having a result happen, racist!, biology is important vs. biology is whatever I say it is, she had a boyfriend who was very demure, she’s all aggressive and barbaric, staying at home, it distracted from the story that was originally being told, flipping the gender of Ghostbusters, they’re not redoing a play, they rewrite the script completely, make the characters dumb, the dumbest one was Bill Murray (he was a fake), a girl who is a babysitter, that’s what the idea was, a fuckin stupid idea (unless Jesse is missing something), they’re not going to inseminate their kids, the whole point of the job “babysitter” why maids are called maids and maidens, we need the money for the family, cooking and cleaning and moving things around, now you have to do that for your husband, the male version, these are teenagers, 12 – 13, they get out of the house, keep them out of the liquor cabinet, tape me to the seat, getting them back, what’s going to happen, one of the kids should be older than you, big and strong, it works, like Home Alone, get them back home before the cops get them, set it in Hollywood, get a celebrity to play a celebrity, Alpha Dog (2006), acknowledge the original movie to set the expectations, we know about this other movie, expectations set, things can be fixed, let’s gender flip stuff, a panacea somehow, let’s gender flip Romeo and Juliet, gay men or lesbians, a girl in her balcony, a guy wooing a girl, a gay movie, butch and femme, old couples, people married for seventy years, in real life this happens, lesbian couple sixty years on, that doesn’t work for storytelling, you have to have some differences, what if you don’t believe in differences, flippable on a dime, Will has somebody visiting, a direct message, your politics are always interesting to me, in foreign policy matters you’re basically a tankie, denying the Uyghur genocide, pro-DPRK, anti-sending arms to Ukraine, in other ways your conservative, love Heinlein, vaxx skepticism, trans skepticism, strong opinions of things being for men and women, a little trad for me, a lot more enthusiastic about abortion, it’s fuckn legal up here, it just happens, grew up in a house with women, uncles are different from aunts, people are easily liftable, they’re the same too, arms and legs and pencils, women writers put on a male character, anything is possible, I was told I could be anything I wanted, you’re wrong about that stuff, that’s not normal, weightlifting, the author’s introduction to Slaughterhouse Five, department of anthropology, any thing you study at university that has the words “studies” at the end, science fiction written by women, people have bad ideas, millions of years, get two dogs, lift up the back end and looking, both sharp teeth, people are even more different than dogs, sexual dimorphism throughout the species, the brain is a part of the body, a school shooting, the person who did the shooting was trans, a dude did it, who does school shootings?, dudes, the fucking hormones do shit to your brain, some girls like to wrestle, a female wrestling team at most high-schools?, female basketball players, female football, soccer, lacrosse is a male game as well, lawn hockey, ring hockey, sports teams and interests for girls, kinda weird, adult person, a manifesto, adults going to schools, a graduate of that school going back, something went wrong there a long time ago, dudes tend to do school shootings, poison, most girls don’t shoot, revenge fantasy, feels they were victimized, commit suicide, abandon schools, not a popular idea, doesn’t seem to come up much in the debates, make it more like prison, mandatory universal education, more people reading, be critical of stuff, there are good teachers, there are good prison guards, an English class, we’re writing essays about the books, very much alone in that, the books are boring and stupid, bullshit to write the essays, Jesse loves essays, what purpose to essays serve in our society, they’re punishment, the next six months will tell, the war goes on for twenty years, jerking off the audience, Jonathan Swift, hilarious essay, this is what you should be striving for, structured like an essay, digressions, making fun of the solution being offered, Edgeworks, why are trying to make everybody like Harlan Ellison, there were essayists, that’s 60 years ago, essays are wonderful, some people should write them, teaching them how to organize their thoughts, let’s look at a youtube comment, sometimes they’re well written and badly spelled, people want to communicate, if they spell correctly, intentional misspelling, teh, more high end, tiktok style video, clickbaity stuff, someguy’s building a mechsuit, forthright people who want to express their appreciation, thanks for this video, an answer to your query, what went wrong, they aren’t being graded, mispronounce a word you’ve never spoken, it all goes back to it’s an institution, this is where you go to die, all scary things, the hospital, preschool, a montesorri school, teachers are burdened with 10-20 kids, yellow jackets, hold hands, dealing with a herd, a herd of children needing to be herded, we’re not herd animals, horse and sheep love big groups, you need an uncle a friend and a dad to teach you something, telling 17 guys the same thing, this kid has this problem, needs certain standards to live up to, math, reading, do you think most kids learn to read in school, do most kids learn math in school, the institution is broken, girls are better at doing schools than boys, public school has always been broken, the schools don’t teach, alternative school, the kids who failed or got kicked out, kids liked it a lot more, teachers got it a lot more, we have to punish criminal wrongdoers, before the settlers came in, put you on this island, this is the way we do it, it’s good to have a place where you have the x-ray machine, school is the worst institution, prisoners learn more in prison than in school, got nothing to do, learn trades, car repair, what did people do before school, apprentices, guilds, learn a trade, go into the family business, sailor, tutors and parents, uncles and aunts, primer books, one of the first ESL teachers around, not a single word of English, very nice lady, students loved her, the normal thing, mostly not, teaching a program they disagree with, they’re always looking for teachers, making a new school, pick the team, the same teaching philosophy, struggle through this horrible system, safe babysitting, fun babysitting, 30 or 40 kids in the classroom, socializing, being down by the river washing and singing songs, also Jonathan, not everybody needs to learn to read, to plead to a politician, plead to a judge, bus driver, short order cook, stop signs, functionally literate, they didn’t learn that from school generally, parents, older brother, older sister, uncle, individual tutors, most kids don’t read with their parents, most parents don’t read, why is that, two parents are outside the home a lot, kids being raised by strangers, they’re little fucking sponges, you can see the kid learning shit, you can see massive progress happening, their brains are young and spongy, some tutor needs to be doing this, that value, they don’t have time, they’re addicted to their other things, priorities, if you work an eight hour shift, reading to your kid is not relaxing, when’s that reading happening, grandma’s retired, without an education we wouldn’t have a common culture, the anthem, the history, Shakespeare, no common frame of reference, get things done, because of the internet, micro-culture, jail them harder, didn’t want university to stop, 4 years then you’re done, learning is wonderful, didn’t remember it ten days later, for what purpose, we’re not able to do that now, concrete me, working the census, training, your name and your pronouns, she doesn’t know what a pronouns, now is the time we need to be caring about pronouns, when people were able to communicating, “leading”, that’s a lady, she’s an old lady you can tell by looking at it, the “leader”, enforcing the rules, she’s an institution, the old lady’s way, the government way, strap her in a chair and yell at her about pronouns, certain frames of reference, society to function smoothly, close to a civil war, upset and grumpy, people don’t understand each other, I’m assuming your pronouns are the worst, a humiliation ritual, land acknowledgment, we’re sitting on unceded territory, couched as honouring, leadership classes, a lack of education, we had a way of doing it, a mixed group, they made the movie, the teacher would get very angry, the kids did not take that lesson, a game being played, kids inherently, the way you learn hopscotch, a child culture, using the rules are being used to fuck with the guards, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, picking the worst leaders, failed to correct them, they’re enforcing the way they want to speak, I can’t afford a car, a house, or a kid, I can afford a tattoo and a Starbucks and my pronouns my hair colour and my piercings, an animal trapped in a cage, get rid of all the institutions, for humans health, and hence you defend them, corrupt, a little bit of power, elbow that person down, if I controlled the institutions I would like them very much, sent people to the Moons, did institutions send people to the room, a kind of story about institutions we can tell, why did NASA exist after a certain point, few guys working a console looking at old probes, Elon Musk, whoever’s his estate, companies, Google is in institution now, owns planets, preserve knowledge, grouping together is an institutions, start with a big pile of money, they devolve, The Royal Society, what has it done from us lately, when did the Royal Society get disbanded?, the people in the clouds in Gulliver’s Travels, dot org no less, science book prize, responsible for England’s military might, used to colonize the world, they need to be disbanded, overturning of these things, a Robert E. Howard, you’re the Lovecraft in this, the world needs barbarians, vaccines against COVID-19, shape publish discourse, like that the vaccine doesn’t work?, down with the institutions, nothing but oppress and hold Jonathan back, overproduction of people who think they’re elites, an axe to grind against every institution, do suggest anarchy, know a dude, wants to learn that shit, I’m gonna fix that thing, that’s how you do it, YouTube is a better institution, a tech utopian vision, more on the anarchist, works collectively, the system women lived under in James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, very old and needs to be changed, when the whole thing collapses, forcibly disbanded, go up to the doors and start chopping, gets the axe, traditional publishing, they don’t really understand what trouble they’re in, the bottom is going to fall out, New York publishing system, people like Jonathan, the authors that people look up to, books are not going to go away, paperbooks are never going to go away, too good a tech to throw away, merits that can’t be replaced, no tech ever dies, but the dominance does change, most people learn to read somehow, she loves her kids, some have to do it in prison, we gotta face facts, essay writing is not the key to success, blogposts, essays, children being taught them is a mistake, executive summaries, a stupid elected politician, make their shitty decision, a concise essay to read, Trump didn’t like reading them, his genius is being a stupid idiot and trusting his gut, they’re all up their own fucking asses, a bunch of words that mean enemy, no way to plan your society, they’re not as interesting generally, very topical, a fantasy story, very highly influential, Horatio Alger style stories, the least popular podcast you can do, if we were all literary people in coffee houses, we’re on the wrong track, learn how to read essays, we’re going to war with Ukraine, The New York Times, intellectuals in the New Jersey area, you don’t want to rock the boat, how was this useful, was once a great institution, centuries ago, The New York Times book review, obviously trash, a low class font, high fancy script font, a long time, new ones pop up, civilization vs. barbarians, the people online are digital barbarians, faceless hordes.

Welleran And The Sword Of Welleran

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #784 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #784 – Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard, read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (4 hours, 5 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Connor Kaye, Alex, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, October and December [1929], The Return Of Skull-Face, by Robert E. Howard AND Richard A. Lupoff, open for a sequel, paid by the word, hoping for a sequel, a bold statement, incredibly clear, the Mary Sue character is Steve Costigan, semi-modern world, super punch powers, a different same guy, WWI shell-shocked veteran, more, Conan in a cave, not the same as Sailor Steve, a wanderer with no ties, expecting Zuleika to die, a shell-shocked Stephen, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, very similar, Seven Footprints To Satan by A. Merritt, he’s Satan, New York, missions, wear the ape suit, kill the guy, the ape suit, Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, a Lemurian sorcerer, [The Howard Collector (#9), Spring 1967], he’s already got the idea, Elmore Leonard, Karen Makes Out -> Out Of Sight, facesucking happens, kisses George Clooney, Double Entendre, a little pause, story proper, a huge mistake, a Poe poem fragment, Thule rhymes with newly, a misnumbered chapter, such a relish and enthusiasm to your voices, growl y work, soliloquy, throws himself at the bars, all poems?, Talbot Mundy, one Swinburne, a lot of Chesterton, Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam, magic shadow shapes that come and go, directly quoted, oh there it is!, the epigraph of the very first chapter, right up front, internal comparison, look at the two, more than 10 years, Fu Manchu continues for about 40 years, movies get a hold of Fu Manchu, Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu, Thanksgiving, still hope for Fu Manchu, The Mandarin from Marvel, the Johnny Quest TV show, Doctor Zen, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ming The Merciless, the Klingons, the yellow peril stereotype, Kaiser Wilhelm II, excuses to conquer things, justification for what Fu Manchu is doing, the supposed heroes are archaeological graverobbers, pillaging of archaeological, the James Bond books, the opium wars, European exploitation in Asia, go Fu go!, the unmitigated better, a problem in this book, Skull-Face is racist, turn my blacks and my browns and my yellow, pan-Asian co-prosperity sphere, we’ll chop your heads up, empire no matter where it goes and what it does, playing these oppressed people against each other, seize power for himself, you white people, Howard was smarter, Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft think about their racism a lot, Steve work for this guy, he just saved you from hashish addiction, you don’t have PTSD anymore, the Irishmen who is the American who is Robert E. Howard, allies himself with the British Empire, conflicted here, to flourish, not that detailed, you could have been a king, the sequel book, curious, slash Skull dash Face, the flawed hero, legitimate grievances, Skull Face is Atlantean, as only Robert E. Howard can do, a living mummy, The Hour Of The Dragon, mummified, Acheron, LV-426, Richard Shaver, the prophet, Lemuria, Mu, Thule, amazing poem, Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe, the farther last l, out of of space and out of time for the rest of the poem, read more Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, a John Buchan adventure that turns, who is the boss of the network I’m working for, a secret police officer, a smart and funny man, exotic Asian adventures, completely forgotten, having a lot of fun putting this together, playing in someone else’s sandbox, The Black Stone, what if it was Call Of Cthulhu, I read this story by my body, Tuesday class, D&D, wrote up a module, a rip off of the opening of this book, three boys, a recent realms war, hashashiri, an opium like propdict, marks their hands with a trilobite, steal some royal jelly, the unguent, to enhance his mumminess, train tracks walking from home Taito Bandito, directly inspired by, wrote down a dream,

dreamt the alien invasion of the earth began through vapes. dissatisfied humans got addicted to cheap alien vapes smuggled in from “outside”. incompetent earth govts couldn’t stop the smuggling. eventually the poors of earth preferred the alien health care plan that came with… …cheap vapes. the earth govts and their media lapdogs were playing up lies about health care concerns about the alien vapes, but were so corrupt and the lies so obvious that only a puritanical few bought into it. and when any of these got sick they took the alien health care. […] through human fronted proxies the aliens plowed profits from their vapes into real estate and started selling cheap housing to poors. 2 year mortgages. this really got earth’s human overlords mad. after 7 years, the aliens had successfully taken over the earth and most humans… …were absolutely fine with it.

didn’t think anything of it, smoking hashish, basically opium, is it possible to get addicted to hashish, concentrated marijuana tar?, withdrawal symptoms, brain fog vs. physically debilitating, martini withdrawal, cigarette withdrawal is intense, a headache, why hashish?, assassin, the same story almost as the old man in the mountain, People Of The Black Circle, Marco Polo, the old man in the mountain, a fantasy land, I have the power to send you to heaven, recruited to be an assassin, completely correct, why this story feels its substantial, Omar Khayyam (1957), the world trade center attacks, 77 houris, mixing them together, his first choice, chasing the dragon, Lord Dunsany talking about Lord Dunsany, I just came from the world you created, told like a straight story, the response to stories in The Book Of Wonder, the inspiration for Lord Dunsany style stories, eastern exotic sounding places, aiming for with the girl, Zuleika, white enough, a much more detailed racist, it’s a science, I’m a scientist, not just a wizard, recruiting business, one time dose reducer, get you addicted to another drugs, makes your arms strong, lacking something a little bit, the main character is telling his own story, our drug addicted PTSD hero is telling his story, the descriptions of things are more serviceable, he’s not a poet, published during his lifetime, not even the height of his popularity, Almuric, kinda sad, awesome beautiful description, kicks along, this Gordon character, the stand-in for Petrie and Naismith, amateur detectives/spies, secret police work in reality, go to Oxford, meet your friends, cut up the middle east, as a Robert E. Howard representative story, can’t fully root for the good guys team, chooses the wrong side, he likes his girl, being in the arms of a beautiful girl who he loves and trusts, a strong character, brave, initiatve, saves his butt a couple of time, animal magnetism, he got beefy arms, beefy guns, how quickly he blows through the layers of conspiracy and worldbuilding, secret catacombs under London, the Cult Of The Scorpion, pre-Adamite, any other author, we’re just going, The Shadow Kingdom, They Live (1988), also Plato, the myth of the cave, William Shakespeare, Philip K. Dick, a conspiracy against a footsoldier, a flawed character, too awesome, Solomon Kane’s flaw is he’s insane, he’s a religious whackjob, God’s vengeance on earth, a vessel, that just makes it better, a poem with Solomon Kane, a historical incident, The Hills Of The Dead, flying vampires, holding the Staff of Solomon, Dennis Dorgan or the Mountain Man stories, he’s fixed of that, who’s going to cut up Africa, the tattoo on his hand, a mission to impersonate somebody, ape suit, catacombs are fine, coulda gone so hard, could gone the extra way, cut my own path with my girl, living as a hermit in a cave, living in Celephais, a dead bum in the ocean, gone mad, the end, kinda pulpy at the end, from the very top tier, colourful muscular description, so morally degenerate, my morals had been so beaten, go through some struggle, survive drug withdrawl, willing to die to keep the girl alive, moving on, a ticket to solve his addiction problem, willing to go against Skull-Face, he should have been more conflicted about it, serpent men are not so bad, a lot shorter, saved Skull-Face’s life, we’re square now, you’ll be my slave forever, A Witch Shall Be Born, favourite Conan, he’s not Conan, Kull would be pondering, am I a shadow?, this is all weird, kind of is, supposed to be a realistic story, not this pure force of will, not even Sailor Steve, they search the mummy case, poking at it, hey you just let him go, mesmerism, a great scene, we as the audience know this is Skull-Face, let me look at this sarcophagus, just a dead body, can’t possibly be him, a little down on the art, page 33 of the 46 page one in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, in the foreground, looking very Aryan, over the shoulder of horror, supposed to be a horror story, how to make Skull-Face in the canny valley, skeleton with a bit of skin, an acquired taste, Hugh Rankin is not great, appreciate them, Conan By Tweet, muddy looking, they’re stylized, a sketch, not the same kind of line work as you see in Finlay, a legitimate master, quickly and cheaply, the opening art, scraggly nails, the Fu Manchu vibe, Egyptian for a while, the man who came from the sea will be their god, so good, the dry run for this, literally yellow, parchment like bones, the eyes are very sunken, you can’t understate how awesome, hot under the collar, presumed to be Zuleika, black people, an arab looking dude, and the web, this is the threat, all these races are against the Anglo-American global empire, more cartoony, I don’t like Skull-Face anymore, WWI, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), his best movie, the funnest, wry and clever, playing with tropes, this plot in a large sense, David Lo Pan, Fu Manchewy, marry a girl with green eyes, get his body back, so charismatic, fish out of water, friends with some Chinese guy, not my culture, fumbling and tumbling, he thinks he’s the white savior, he’s the sidekick viewpoint character, starts like a Lovecraft story, why did a whole block of Chinatown explode, Zugartha?, the adventure isn’t over, underground tunnels, black blood of the earth, drink this potion, skepticism of any authority, tied with humour, Howard would have liked Carpenter’s stuff, into conspiracies, conspiracy minded, do the blood test, put on these glasses, drink the potion as you’re going down in the elevator, Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson, The Ten O’Clock People by Stephen King, action sequences, They Live works as the premise, putting on a monkey suit, he’s smart because he looked at his shoes, why isn’t this a better known story?, the 15th thing you would mention, so much other stuff, for other authors, the standard is so high, prejudice against it because it is a pastiche, angling for a certain market, the most successful author of the time, Seabury Quinn, The Vampire Master, Agatha Christie meets this trope, Cora, a reference to Edgar Wallace, Boby Derie, the ideas that carry you not the prose, like a rollercoaster, the smear of not completed by Robert E. Howard maybe, no comic book, no movie, no TV show, a race war with the brown people, a very controversial movie, the new Fall Of The House Of Usher on Netflix, Evan Lampe, Mike Flanagan, Edgar Allan Poe checklist, The Haunting Of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, cheapens his own work, a hill haunted house, no modern writer can write in someone else’s shoes, modern to its bones, can’t adapt someone else’s work, post-modern, not such a problem, so pervasive, everybody is doing it, William Gibson, same with Sword & Sorcery, Fritz Leiber was good, an exception, two Conans!, one is small one is big and they like girls!, there is a dangerous threat to white supremacy, a threat to democracy, a threat to the west, a threat to the rules based older, not international law, aka we say what goes, thinking white supremacy is bad, George W. Bush, make democracy happen, Professor Moriarty starting WWI, something similar here, start a war for reasons, I’m leading the brown races into victory, hah! suckers I’m not actually Egyptian, deciding where to put the twist, good things and the bad things, anticipating what the students like, there’s a beautiful woman: the master needs you, the 9 year old thinks girls are yuck, all identical beautiful daughter, a blue stripe a yellow stripe, everybody gets a love interest, champion you to her father, having so much fun with this story, you want to have an introduction to Robert E. Howard, a lot of understanding, take it at face value, a college student, do you think this is his most racist story?, Black Canaan, The Hyena, where this story fumbles a little, Limehouse, only 48 houses, not at his strongest when not describing Texas, New Orleans, the book research showing, beautifully told, the East of Africa, the racism, super-racist, a werewolf story, a were-hyena, tricking his acolytes, Hasim, a brute, so is the Afghani henchman, disposable characters, a rich field, the assumption that it would work, all those people, undead Atlantean necromancer, such a bad enemy, the situation in Djibouti, in 1977 the French said…, France is like yup, just looking at the history, a home invasion, almost a century goes by, divesting of colonies, gun pointed at the floor right now, this guy isn’t leaving, mutual security, a treaty between two equal countries, hey Italians, Italy sits on the couch with a big gun, Russia would you like a military base next to France?, within walking distance from each other, at what point did that independence come filling the house with potential foes, right near the Suez canal, Panama Canal, Noriega stopped talking orders, they don’t call it that anymore, revolt against the guy who won’t leave your country, not the ideal leader, so vague, grow a lot of bananas?, more sarcophaguses out there, the first one to awaken, if this was a movie, the last shot would be a bunch of sarcophagus floating, the sequel comes out and it, this time a lesbian Skull-Face, licked together, on youtube, commenting and liking, released as one audiobook, as fast as possible, an American accent, getting tired, the accent slipping off, are they called thick accents?, strong accents, not a very sweaty Australian accent?, Crocodile Dundee was ocker Australian?, British texan accent, when you think of horror books, Razorback, so many great Australian horror movie, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), art film Paris, a car movie, an Australian biker movie, specializing in car chases, terrorizing gangs of bikers, Soylent Green (1973), a Volkswagen beetle with spikes coming out of it, gang takes over town movie, Christine, Trucks, Dead End Drive-In (1986), aka regular Australia right now, juvenile delinquents, Brave New World but with movies, dystopian drive-in, escape the drive-in, so many good films, so lucky, whatever video stores, a lot of video stores, previously not rewound, a big thick thousand page book of every movie on VHS, so much treasure, do a rental, nightmare, late fees, when you buy a movie, come back never, a great pleasure we still kind of have, so hard to search through now, JustWatch service, Plex, pirate any movie you want, Tubi has the best set of movies, Prime’s pretty good, Netflix, Shudder, Razorback (1984), Stone (1974), Bubba Zanetti’s my hero, Cinefamily, victims of the me too movement, are you an attractive woman, still can’t get work, secret job, all the shareholders (board?) got an anonymous email about an anonymous woman, a non-profit, Alamo Draft House, things to pirate, if you could choose only one country per decade, Americans made a lot of good movies at one point, Britain made some good movies, an exciting time for world cinema, each country wanted to be that new dominant, Italian movies, French producers, American actors, Dreamspeaker, (CBC tv Movie 1976), they adopt him, runaway kid who burns things down, sympathetic judge, that was unexpected, mute companion slash husband, put in a tree and let their corpse be eaten by birds, a Vancouver Island bases sort of story, Thunderbird blanket, a pretty brutal ending, a TV movie that came out on TV in the 1970s, child suicide, kid strangling himself, dies of broken heart, this is impossible, Jesse loved it, Chief Dan George, George Clutesi, Kelly (1981), realistic vs. Hollywood ending, about the horrible institution that school is, her blind friend, sets fires to things, go live with your dad, robs a bank, these two movies so like each other, kids being institutionalized, people like a happy ending, times for certain mediums of art, that was Jonathan, Dead Calm (1989), boat sabbatical and Billy Zane shows up, music in the 1970s, The Beatles, the next big thing, unique and original music, one guy would become the next big thing, a bit too calculated, new service bringing in tons of cash, throwing money at weird things, get a hit with any of these things, a short period of experiment, the president show, House Of Cards, Robin Wright Penn turns to the camera, a condemnation of the actor, a meta-thing, grievance on screen, all the 1980s movies, Stranger Things, Extraction (2020), a low budget action horror movie, Prey (2022)?, Slash/Back (2022), one of three Canadian territories, Nunavut, Yukon, North-West Territories, so much heart, some social issues, tremendous fun to watch, Reservation Dogs, APTN, The Beachcombers, a fun discussion, Wolfen (1981), Poltergeist (1982) with skyrises, irony, Whitley Strieber, 80s UFOlogy, considering doing a podcast, write my book, the picture that Alex is going to delete, a Yeti Nano, Elgato low profile mic arm, iphone 11, upgraded, android guy, more thinkpads, working for Lenovo, a T510, Skylark Dequesni, start wt, pocketknifes, arm a youth gang, brand new keyboard, lowprofile mechanical, cherry ultralow profile, $99, swing over, Blue now owned by Logitech, it’s Swiss!, $20, XP was running, downgraded, 7 was good, law firm as the head of IT, bought out, three month notice, wind everything down, a ton of laptops with no legal owner, shrug, cases and cases, they go in waves, what laptop should I get?, LGR (Lazy Game Reviews), old computer hardware, 45 hours researching laptops, modular, no glue, fixup and give to homeless person, engage that much with the local homeless, Connor must run a laptop, a little bit of noise, from the fan, too intense, good specs for processing videos, limit the processor, 10% of its power, put it across the room, connecting it to a monitor, quickly edit things, a luxury, if you travel, a suitcase style computer, everythings embeded like a tick, millions of files, half-processed, these torrents are on this harddrive, Gulliver Of Mars, The Languages Of Pao, a Don Pendleton, Thunderball, From Russia With Love, came from Trish, Eaters Of The Dead, a fun book, look how thin it is, Sands Of Mars, The Song Of The Whip, cylindrical black thing, the one with the martini, deleted by now, wireless hockeypuck, lightbar, brand and product number, scrutinizing the photo, two middle names, investment companies, hey we’ve been hacked, very popular, it doesn’t take up any deskspace, electric standing desk, cable managment, Uplift desk, an old Ikea Jerker, you should make a website for this there’s money top be made, servicing these desks, facebook page and reddit threads, these desks dont die, super-customizable, modular like Lego, standing desks didn’t exist, they were not an idea yet, sit-stand desks at work, back problems, you shouldnt be sitting for 8 hours a fuckin day, sat with a rigid back, you know actually it’s good to slouch a bit, lied to their whole life, running around with sticks in the forest, thrown into a canoe taken to a farm, left in the library for 18 hours, students that can’t recognize animals, schools so fucked up, scare them straight, its like prison, homeschooling, grow up without huge neurosis and giant deficits, Poland farm work, the culture in this small village is so fucked up, next generation of toxic bullshit, a lot of bullying, the Aryan Nations gang, prison mentality, a daypass to go home, traumatized, empire building, told one thing as a kid, margarine is for lubricating metal at a cheaper price, I Can’t Believe We Were Lied To, the irony of life, plastic bag tablet to dye it, the butter lobby, mush it together, whenever the topic came up, hasn’t grown any mold on it, something you can eat and not die from, a rock will pass through you, not something that’s supposed to be in a human body, food pyramid, students back to back, early Russian Revolution history, the three precursors to the NKVD, Kadets, three political parties vying for power in 1919, designed to show how the Russians were bad, the old curriculum, the regular history of India, massacre in Amritsar, policy of being evil, decided to breakup the country, this is the British doing that, divide and conquer, we don’t learn that much, a hateon for the Russians, 2014, the Holodomor entering Canadian curriculum, have them read The Gulag Archipelago (is 75 hours), there’s a prison system, not a complete picture, the focus is on the things you want to make them think, The Trail Of Tears, why school is evil, testing you on the adherence to these lies, what next?, There Werewolf Of Ponkert by H. Warner Munn, The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann, unabridged, wacky stuff, may need more time, books to do, Februrary next year, that coffee bud, vodka, loosens you up, maybe the show wouldn’t be so good.

Skull-Face illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Skull-Face - illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Skull-Face - illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Ken Kelly - Skull-Face

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The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Progeny by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – Progeny by Philip K. Dick, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (45 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Mike Vendetti, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
IF Worlds Of Science Fiction, November 1954, we’re bringing it back, Worlds Of Science Fiction, IF, it’s IFfy, the tagline, a tier below, a tier above, James L. Quinn, early in IF’s run, 3rd year, Evan Lampe’s podcast, the Philip K. Dick review website, John Taylor Gatto State Controlled Consciousness, schools created to create utopian visions, close to Philip K. Dick’s perspective, the story about the autistic kid, not really autistic, a nurture story, the thesis of the story, raised by robots, kids in it is very unusual in actual science fiction, 9 at the end, Theodore Sturgeon, a good handful, Tony And The Beetles, The Father Thing, comes up every time, something that happened to Philip K. Dick, the hospital, the mental institution, typing on his keyboard, you know what we need is more science fiction stories about kids adopted by robots, Nanny, menacing, how menacing this story is, body horror, sweat and smells of the body, the aftermath of the meeting with the father, The Last Of The Masters, hairy sweaty man, girls boobs, almost connect that to AI, newspaper article through AI, a Promethean moment, Ed is left out of it, he doesn’t participate, channeling Eric Rabkin, the robot doctor, a sandwich, in fairy tales, a science fictional fairy tale, sharing food means you love that person, the squirrel accepts his food, Pete’s doctor/boss/trainer, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, pop the question: will you come and be my son, I don’t like to buy in the diner they skin you, six hundred employees, this is menacing, sentences that go unfinished, training to become a bio-chemist, a messiah for the robots, a go-between, what does the smell of his father remind him of, laboratory animals, a contemptible smell, I can’t place it, just like when he was a baby, Dr. Bish, the automatic heating system clicked on for the night, the smell as the experimental animals, the promising young boy, the boy smiled, awkward and humane, a secret private smile of complete understanding, evil emotions, you’re son’s deformed!, my god, what does it mean?, what about that first wife, a secret that he’s telling us over and over again, a secret Philip K. Dick child?, a waveshot of his head, talking about himself?, sociologically going on, there’s no manual telling you what to do, Dr. Spock, let the kid cry themself to sleep, the worst thing anybody’s ever done to Americans, ADD, needs a lobotomy, icepick lobotomy, one of the Kennedy children became a vegetable, you have to trust the doctor, towards that, that exchange, did he try and pick up the child, a circumcision or something, feel the weight of the child in his arms, sanitary, antiseptic, oedipal complex, and today, sex studies from the 50s, Kinsey studies, living back there, oh my god I’m a homosexual, I had no idea, lies and wishfulfilment, sweeps the nation as a fad, weird instiutional problems, you’ll be happier when you join the institution and follow the rules, Dick likes twists and layering of twists, a systematic distortion, growing up with the robots and imbibing their ideology, all the paperwork, the consent forms, what does see mean exactly?, the laws, math, age, why I was 19, sneaking into the rocket facilities, I was twice your age when this happens, more tired and sweating and balding than he was before, didn’t have a kid at this point, Beyond The Door, a wife cheating on her husband with a cuckoo clock and a boyfriend, whose Pete?, Mrs. Peters, this name, Ed Loyce, Ed Doyle, figures in his life, Pete might be him, the father became extremely busy, coming back, here I am I’m your dad, his dad lived in DC, a serious character flaw, when he’s 18, comes back on the delivery day, expects to have a say, he doesn’t get that, writing to his mom, boarding school, mom, send my pills, non-nervous pills, full of anxieties, nervous breakdown in high school, he takes their answers seriously, is that really true?, he writes about it, the robot is an institution, institutions replace parents, the doctor is not a human, fleshy cover over its arms, two robot taxi drivers, a strapping late model robot, they’re replacing Ed, the doctor adopts the child, talking about himself, these amazing psychological conditions, this unfeeling monster, the child didn’t need to be touched, these things are in the air, 1928, the abortion truck story, children hiding in thornbushes, The Crawlers, The Pre-Persons, the father agrees to go into the abortion truck with him, maths, 1974, the ability to master algebra was the test for having a soul, animal soul, authority says this, what happens if that’s true?, the neuroses that I have, served by robots in a cafeteria, being raised in a boarding school, mandated to join this army, a really bad consequence, keeping the baby with you at all times, Jesse is very talky, primarily about institutions, how institutions sell themselves, what was best for the kid, she trusted the institutions, being inhuman by not wanting to bring the baby to her breast and smell it, she’s not sad about it, I was chatting with the doctor, she’s smoking, people aren’t sad sending their kid off to public school, the entire ideology of the system, a sexual thing, smoking with the doctor, fantasy sex with the doctor, the post coital cigarette, a cuckolding going on, push psychoanalysis a tiny little bit, the biological becomes an institutional complex, 1986, your kid has ADD, your kid needs amphetamines, there’s a biological thing, the calf comes out of the cow, literally happening, how much culture and institutions erode, she is a monster because of it, we’re all monsters, a more primitive part, Dr. Bish what is this weird white liquid running out of my breasts?, he’s an idiot, what a moron, the internet is full of misinformation, an institute, Los Angeles Central Hospital, late for the birth, infodump, we don’t touch our son, when do we get him?, the waveform says he’s going there, another institution, once he’s fully grown up, his brain is no longer plastic, when he’s an adult, molded into what the institute wants, the mom is out of the picture, they’re divorced, Ed Doyle’s alternative, the frontier theme that Evan so rightly picked up on, no squirrels, Pete’s dad’s job is the plumbing, his only job is to supply the sperm, Star Trek, high end jobs, build and maintain those ships and those systems, in the end you still need infantry, pushed away his wife, away all the time on the frontier, a traveling salesman, as a result Janet leaves him, something really important, the gendered nature of labour saving technology, Philip Dick doesn’t get this, Evan’s Philip K. Dick readthrough, hostile to washing machines, microwave, refrigerator, who raises kids?, mostly womens work, the bullshit of raising kids, making the lunch everyday, stroll in from alpha centauri, the wife is making the rational choice, shitwork, Dick really has this problem, after a certain point in the story, son come with me, this is going to be our business, there’s a lot of things that need doing out there, out beyond Prox, nature, self-fulfillment, won’t even accept his sandwich, extrovert with the nerdy kid son, eat hamburgers, sitting at home, making plans to destroy humanity, make them less smelly and more docile, Sales Pitch, commuting through space, replacing body parts, have your colon replaced with a plastic tube, no more sweatglands, make everything antiseptic, just make sure that children are clean at all times, the runny nose, he needs to go on a boat and learn the ropes, the mom’s instinct and the dad’s instinct, when the answer is the institution they’re both wrong, giving up a lot of power to the institutions, Mildred Clingerman story, an automated kitchen, about 7 Ray Bradbury stories, Catharine Beecher, bastion of their power, use science and knowledge and education to rationalize the domestic sphere, a viewpoint, a little glowing breast, spray on glowing, she’s glowing because she just gave birth, baby needs milk, not enough baby formula, baby formula is bad for kids, you could use a breast pump, giant reliance on artificial milk, convenient, maybe its because you’re at work, factory or office or school raising other people’s children, bad marriage, the menace is unstated, maybe the Oedipus complex is worth it, not just corporations, government regulated facility at the very least, public private partnership, a legal person, not a caring person, not capable of caring, that’s what his waveform says, he’s going to be a rocket jockey, the son doesn’t even understand the question, he smiles, you think desire has anything to do with it, the robots and the man all have emotions, maybe he’s not the best boss, as close to lying he gets, designed to be sympathetic towards Ed, propaganday, why do we trust this institution, a photo of his plastic brain, bio-chemistry, they’re going to fuck around with humans, the alternative is the queen living West Texas planet, emphasizing the cleanness, unpolluted, smoking, drinks a brandy-frappe, what’s best of the child, she’s been reading all the books, Gayelord Hauser for nutrition, parenting books, how they sell of these things to parents, no shopping, no clubs, no social life, the optimistic part of the story, Earth is going to Hell, Dick was an optimist, Hello, Doc!, the event has happened, a top-level robot, it had fooled him, Dr. Bish appeared plump and well-fed, is the robot married, diamond-tie clasp, simulated manicured nails, a pinstriped shirt, white collar vs. blue collar, just the baby daddy, rushed in from the airport, have you seen a squirrel before?, leaned on one way, we can’t trust this, trusting it is the bad thing, we agreed to this, they were intimate at some point, to determine the gender of the child, he’s only gone six months, natural sex, a lady with boobs so he fell in love with her, she’s a monster because she trusts the institutions, yes I am, H.P. Lovecraft, that amazing transformation thing, regular successful businessman, not hairy, the robots becoming too human, Isaac Asimov’s Let’s Get Together, a critical mass of robots, Herbert Goldstone’s Virtuoso, learns to play the piano, music is supposed to be hard, somethings shouldn’t be automated, AI art, two robot taxi drivers are acting like robots, literally human beings who are obeying instructions, turning them into robotic people, ROTC, failed the first day, twirl your rifles, get a haircut, his robot stories are so different, fixed it, could have easily been a chapter in The Humanoids by Jack Williamson, serialized vs. novel, earth vs. an alien planet, expanded novel version is really good, an answer to any objection, a really important concept, any word you don’t know the meaning of your are subject, bleeding under your dura, doctor I know exactly how we fix this, subjecting ourselves to their ideologies, sometimes that’s a good thing, look both ways before you cross the street, a hard concept to get across, when we read these stories, wow that’s really powerful, but why?, escape valve, the place we can run off to, frontiers exist, a perceived option, go west young man, where do Americans run off to?, Taiwan, to Vietnam, not an option, Miss Columbia, propaganda, plant a flag, government giving you an outlet, free real estate, shaped politics for most of American history, pick up your stakes and go, everyone moved to Saskatchewan for free land, then everyone moved to Vancouver for jobs, the dust-bowl, the dirty 30s, 3 million people were displaced, we don’t have the language to describe it, people moving out of California to Texas or Florida, internal movement, region in this, State Controlled Consciousness, every utopian movement, Sunday school, propitiate your ideology, Dr. 2G-Y Bish, bishop, kids put into religious orders, designed to break up the family, outsourced to religion, keeping doctrine, interesting idea, not very many characters, Janet, Ed, a big jump, takes him out into the country, Los Angeles, go back to the city, a general experience, Evan’s generation, the first generation to go to college, those Thanksgivings, those times back are a little weird, at least four or five years to orient back to the working class culture, academic sorts, we gotta get this fence fixed, inspiring and interesting stuff, intellectual stimulation, trying to communicate that, it doesn’t translate very well, rebalance how you talk to people, most people don’t read books, unless youre constantly building up, Jack Williamson, Gilles Deleuze, cows, chickens, horse, chicken business, cow business, the second dimension, initiated into a more bourgeois culture, the double gap, so rich, fairly obscure Philip K. Dick story, following the 9 years, Paul sings the classics, Cat’s in the cradle and the cradle’s on fire?, kill his father and marry his mother, it doesn’t come from the Greeks, Sigmund Freud, is it true?, not exactly, recapitulate the relationships you are trained in, animals training other animals, interacting with other humans, any of the seven times I’ve tried, maybe that’s not true, a structure, he likes older women, where is the libido?, the attitude of Doctor Bish, looking at Peter the baby with a look that was greedy, in Anti-Oedipus, the bureaucrat caresses the forms, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, bottom of page 71, creasing the edges with his nail, plugged his desire into rules and regulations and forms, go to the police, see if there’s a detective on duty, it gives them something to do, he’s not like Mr. Spock, sinister and evil and aloof, like Data, Data had curiosity, satire, embodiment of authority, an evil twin (Lore), psychoanalyze Star Trek, the Lore Data stuff, gave him a twitch, Lore made Data have a twitch, there’s a twitch here, a libidinal twitch, different educational institutions, Hampshire College, Fordham University, unstructured to structured Jesuit university, post-modern to classicist language, a whole different language, small economically depressed town where half the stores are closed, an aversion, they were hit with books at school, lame TV too, a reality TV show was cool, marriage counselor reality TV show, what is it on cable?, therapy, if that was L.A., a level beneath, an aversion to reading books, the struggle, Peter Camenzind by Herman Hesse, goes back home, his rural town was better, a spiritual transformation, stained with sweat, page 74, he brought out his pipe and tobacco, a big sulfur match, murmured, this is a good pipe, 25 years ago, do the math, only about twice as old as you, a WWI veteran, WWII guy, at a certain point in life every man starts smoking a pipe, filling and lighting a pipe, old fashioned stuff, that ritual, sucking on a pipe, casting smoke out of their nose, a little bit interested, lost in his reverie, if he was a little more skillful they could’ve connected, he had the right instinct, what makes it a tragedy, when dads fuck off, there’s a problem, wife, institution, capitalism, we could work together, how long it is, almost nothing happens, a walk, a hospital scene, episodes over 9 years, backfill, infodumping, 3 scenes, permission, fill out these forms, the ride in the car and the walk, the last scene, off with Doctor Bish and Peter, the key to Peter’s reactions, emotional, that’s interesting that you think we can connect, oof, anthropological look at the father from the son’s POV, distancing, broken sentence, when you will…, quite right, the backstory talking, bumming around town, outside school rightly, sneaking into the rocket launching yards, hopped over to Mars, a hasher, Ganymede was all sewed up tight, space freighter, worked his way out to Proxima, workaway, I found what I wanted, swelling with pride, little retail and service place, everybody needs a plumber, a good job, the best blue collar job, the pay is very good, when the water starts flooding you need a plumber, building communities, he sounds very free, like a rolling stone, not an appealing life to someone who’s a part of the institution, she doesn’t leave the earth, she likes being under the system, you could go off, there’s fear involved, there’s the comfort of the institution, institutions can’t love you, fill out your forms, ivy coloured walls, drifters, cafeterias, you have money, an efficiency you don’t get at home, living in China, didn’t eat dinner, new job, cafeteria lunch, where do you wanna eat?, doesn’t the food just kind of appear?, where to eat and what to make, drops from your mind really quick, elementary schools in France?, fancy lunches?, 20 years in a highshcool, 2 hours or longer to come back home, sandwich, all sorts of good things in it, presence of the outside inside the institution, “I’m not reduced to the institution, I have my sandwich”, taco Tuesday, people get excited about the rotation, a crazy thing, homemade food, ketchup classified as a vegetable, school lunches program, the healthy food pyramid we just made up, at the top is a greedy corporation, like am institutionalized restaurant, weird hot things, hot lunch and cold lunch, 2 cafeterias in the same school, Cold Lunch Paul, bologna sandwiches, hot lunch for free, against the rules, a person who hasn’t been completely institutionalized, get you hooked on the hot lunch, back to bologna sandwiches, like the place, baloney, 70 liters of chili, more efficiency, the prices start creeping up, adulterating the materials that go into the pot, corruption, let’s have a daycare, a hired person, paying money vs. taking turns, we can lower the quality of the care here, just not loved, all in this little 46 minute story, chat GPT, it can do my homework, I can fire everybody, charge subscriptions, hire somebody to do this, you still hire dishwashers for restaurants, an open version of chat GPT, answer emails from other robots, an efficiency there, students are into chat GPT, grunt garbage work, pedagogical value of repetition, they’d much rather cheat, painting class, if they’re into it they’ll do it, most students don’t want to be essayists, kids doing their homework, punishment, if you get low grades you need more attention from the government forms, chat GPT can be really educational, dialogue with it a lot, The Three-Body Problem, Chinese TV series of 30 episodes, suggestions and prompts, analysis, no that’s not what I want, good ideas, some creativity sparks, Rossignol, better and better, The Ash Grove, makes you cry if you let it, makes children emotional, as a corrective, analyze Philip K. Dick’s story, Progeny, a search engine that’s weak, that’s not enough, you have to work for 20-30 minutes, write some John Adams Thomas Jefferson boy love romance, oh yes you’re right, you overestimate, most teachers can’t even get the assignment clear, make sure you have a period at the end of all your sentences, formatting problems, what this is perfect for, autobiography or memoir, just answer the question, a sophisticated text prediction, good grammar, less important for students, the facts don’t matter that much, formatting is really important, this is a lie, how they get good grades, cheating the system, a good solution to a bad problem, easier for the prisoners, abolish the prisons, new ways to punish students, make other kids do their homework, what chat GPT’s revolution, read this paragraph and reorder them, take out things you don’t like, living in an affluent area, I’m a governess, there’s a scary man, young Tommy is very bright, essay about thermodynamics, describing some of Jesse’s job, same advantage that rich people’s job, it doesn’t help them, how to understand great poetry, a bunch of assignments that are due, parents hire a ghostwriter to right a novel, ivy league school, Rebecca Black’s song Friday, I like sitting in the front seat sometime, super-well produced, something to make their kid feel like a superstar, chat GPT same advantage as the rich kids, we’re pretty conclusive, Pirates Of Venus, north shore of Minnesota, overseas, NSA work, top secret, Evan Lampe is gonna step up, Farnham’s Freehold, 12th – 23rd, Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg, solved, feeds and resources, podcast schedule, the music under it, crazy, a youtube thing, people don’t know, people discover that audiobooks because of youtube, excited for them, any sign of a ghost is excitement, it’s youtube vs. books, Arthur C. Clarke, past The Colorado Kid, Alex from Pulpcovers was censored, an appeal, after careful review…, sooo careful, a lady might not have any pants on, jealous losers on twitter, White Trash, HOE REPAIR, just exposure, what Jesse likes about Jonathan (he’s read a whole bunch of books Jesse hasn’t read), the guy from Switzerland who had nice handwriting, an autobiography of a character’s soul, a German genre, fake autobiography, Bohemian Europe in the 1890s, talking to farmers, dude, common for some people, fake and phony and putting on airs about intelligent they are, literary circles, don’t read anything past 10 years ago, Scalzi has replaced Heinlein, they say they believe that, keep current, you don’t have time to read both, most of everything was crap, harder to determine today, hasn’t withstood the test of time yet, debating how to pronounce Weichsel in 100 years, first hit rap group, recorded their songs here, hit song, fun catchy song, walking around the town, they saw the sign, that’s it, 50 years from now, this town has not accomplished achievement, absolutely amazing, on the ferry, CTV News, CNN for Canada, tell Americans, the shitty Justin Trudeau government, an extra bunch of money to poors, they want to get reelected, full blown Social Credit, a tax rebate, 19.8% commercial space empty, 50% is much more common in a small town, all for the sake of posterity, chat GPT teachers marking chat GPT homework, dead town, it’s just awful, hang out at the bus stop, hang out at the convenience story, kipple from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, all the non-losers have left for the off-world, the world of the book, same world as Progeny, everybody is replaced by robots, squirrels are dying, institutional pollution, fill the ocean, thesis proven, same setting, same ideas, not literally true, working the same mine, working the same ideas, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, a stepping stone to get to that other idea, androids, robots, three weeks from now, a really good one, Sheba by Jack Higgins, in response to people not liking Dial Of Destiny, the legendary temple of Sheba, put me down, Indiana Jones tanking is kinda bullshit, poor box office, in what period of time, one of the most expensive movies ever made, we didn’t need the first one either, we wanted it, now we don’t want them so much, two versions of The Warriors (1979), available as an audiobook, an excuse to watch it, comic book inserts, less real and gritty, Ship Of Ishtar by A. Merritt, work to do, editing this anthology, for secret operations, bunch of authors, substack, cool public domain stuff, Moon Tomb, the moon and death, Misha Burnett needs to promote better, some salty interesting points on twitter, great cover art, he’s problematic, jealous?, when you get famous enough people become jealous, Poe was a third rate writer, why did they say that?, because its true?, shit all over Lovecraft, lob a grenade and leave and close the door behind them, Edgar Allan Poe, who’s a better poet from the United States?, start making your list now, Annabelle Lee is popular and it’s good, The Song Of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain’s parody of The Raven, Bugs Bunny, controversial, that’s Heinlein in extremis, alcoholic mother and the lawyer father, bridge party, people are not asking for an adaption, see everybody explode, skinny dipping, the young black kid, see you on twitter.

Progeny by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #413 – Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #413

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Soldier’s Home was first published the Contact Collection Of Contemporary Writers, 1925.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #752 – READALONG: The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff

The SFFaudio Podcast
Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, and Terence Blake discuss The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff

Talked about on today’s show:
Nice, France, 1939, The Cataclysm, Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder, Manuscript Found In A Bottle, Manuscript Found In A Fortune Cookie, The Little Red Bag, 10 years later, old science fiction magazine, I got one too, the genre conversation, The Cold Equations, Null-A, A. E. van Vogt, Null-B, Null-F, ripostes, William Tenn, decades later, two kinds of science fiction, hard and soft, what would make this hard SF, calculations, what is causing the moon to hit the earth, never explained, magnetic attraction, gravity, totally crazy, a really good book and enjoyable, gold and platinum, a bold claim, petroleum, oil and coal, fossil fuel, non-biological processes, more than one kind of coal, abiogenic oil, something inside the earth we don’t understand, don’t roll your eyes, Paul has a B.A. in biology, Jesse studied geology, Bryan studied literature, filled the ocean with gravel theory, the weather inst very effected, so he doesn’t suffocate, no Atlantic ocean, there’s no stream, merry old England, weather more like Calgary, central Siberia, where is the water gonna be taken up from?, desertification of Britain, the front framing, the Addis Ababa people dismissing this book, corrected grammar, making fun of his own writing, the Roald Dahl “corrections”, Skiffy And Fanty podcast, there was no conclusion, sidetrack, what about George Lucas and Star Wars, is that kosher?, whoever said that is a radical, the right to do so but probably shouldn’t, what they did to Shakespeare, for the sake of the children, the frame is active, poor broody, how cozy it is, movie script writer, if not in a time machine, The Dam Busters (1955), The Night My Number Came Up (1955), a flight from Hong Kong to Japan, some Wing Commander had a dream, Liberator vs. Dakota, a snowy coast of Japan near a lighthouse, Okinawa, a fantasy in a sense of the dream element, based on a true story, a prophetic dream that came true, WWII, Pat is him, senseless violence, this thing in the moon, upholding the British empire, they’re depending on us, the logic of empire, not a hard economics model, British foodstock, do they starve?, interwar fiction, interesting Janus face, armistice, War Minister, Jaeger, Bismark, no mention of Italian facists, no mention of German, Britain has its own slice, such a good social science fiction book, just imperialism, take this book as a setting, 700 years in the future, museum edition, fun steampunk, untapped resources for science fiction, a computer game with aircraft carrier, FMV cut-scenes, Crimson Skies, airship society, railroad across the moon, the seigniorial system, London townhouses, we’re in railroading time, again, we should shoot our foots off, both of them, fuck ourselves even more, and then everything will be fine, to serve the pride, no good politicians in this book, the prime minster who was good, mutual aid, looses his position, kinda Chamberlainy, we shall avoid award at all costs, Munich by Robert Harris, an interesting spin, a little England play, the narrative arc, more and more convinced, snide and disdainful, such a prat, masterful, he makes us sympathize, he’s above his station, I’m the man who won the chicken contest 17 times, he comes from nobility, retire from being a schoolteacher, telescopy and chickenbreeding, a foresight move, I’m fucked and these kids are gonna need some local neighbour and not so distant government, that’s your best resource?, bummin around london, burning her Vermeers, very bleak, very John Wyndham, very cozy catastrophe, the John Wyndham feel, how this impacted our little community, Invasion (Apple TV series), do not watch Foundation, the camera never pans up, slow, three authors are called out, Rudyard Kipling, good war material, H.G. Wells, the script for The Invisible Man, a different book than what you think it will be, a chicken farmer inordinately proud of himself, maybe gay, bachelor, sexual tension between him and Pat, indignant, he never objects to the uncle thing, strange distance, if it is like any book it is like The War Of The Worlds, so innovative, devastating and overturning, black or grey or brown horde, the colonized come back to colonize, everything rots up there in the rain, a really solid book, Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, The Wind And The Willows, adventures in your backyard, giant ocean liner in his backyard, a very H.G. Wells scene, let’s get ourselves into a war, such a flawed character, very much about government, admiring his government factory built car, they are communists in the most obvious sense, anarchist communists, money is not what motivates people, I need a cow and a bull, the hunting and the housework and the chickens and gardening, Brexit, England standing alone, we don’t need the empire, we don’t need Europe, they’re heroes, we don’t need anybody else, isn’t that the conclusion unless we take the very long view, Eric S. Rabkin, everyone is expelled from London, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, the Eden complex, London being quashed, Oxford, the end of empire?, the metropol, Britain is diminished, a tangible sign, a retreat from empire, Suez crisis, the empire is finished, countries that get a slice, countries that don’t get a piece, the Soviet Union gets nothing, taking the piss, the bankruptcy of a European centered world, they play no role in the book, the isolationist part, fight among europeans, the rebellion of the colonized peoples, religious, anti-white European lines, Blood And Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 by Richard Overy, WWII as the last colonial war, sought colonial dominions, a very young Ho Chi Minh, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Michael Moorcock’s Land Leviathan novels, giant super-tank, Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, a fascinating book, on archive.org, Islamic exploration quest, as from sio many science fiction pulp covers, the monkey book, Planet Of The Apes, the statue of liberty in ruins, what is that statue for?, Washington, D.C., Gustave Dore, a New Zealander visits the ruins of London, The Chrysalids, back to Frankenstein, the Byronic hero, Ruins Of Empires, hordes, that David Sirota movie Don’t Look Up, when Jesse reviewed that movie, “pretty good”, understatement, overstatement, not the greatest thinker ever, the central core of this movie, jockeying at the Moon club, the book proper, losing his money, losing his farm, telegraphed it very well, what is the theme of this book?, pride, excessive pride, almost every level, WWI is because of pride, what if you’re wrong about your level of quality?, who is responsible for WWI?, thrown into a duck pond, playing darts on Sundays, a very very good book, not the exact same tier as The War Of The Worlds, The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, Professor Challenger, Brian Blessed, focusing only on Sherlock Holmes, that very stupid man named Conan Doyle is really smart, he made those girls, chemicals that are poisonous to Earth, hard science, social science, later Doyle, melodrama and emotion, Challenger and his wife, a response to it, The Strand, Scoops, super-fun premises, a ton of books like this, Stowaway To Mars by John Wyndham, so cozy, so catastrophe, The Children Of The Damned, Village Of The Damned, the pertwee inspired series, Quatermass And The Pit, Nigel Kneale, in the wreckage of the 20th century, totally off the radar, a prejudice against stories set in a future that never was, immediately destroyed by history, no mention of WWII, not irrelevant, an amazing artifact, an amazing book, why it doesn’t stand shoulder to shoulder, American publishers, we love disasters, two days holiday to the Moon, emerging thing, cozy comfort SF, trying to understand it, it irks, Becky Chambers depresses Bryan, a cup of tea and a quilt, those cat mystery books, The Cat Who…[books], The Cats Who Walks Through Walls, how important tea is, coffee without milk, half the time, egg for tea, grammatical mistake, the university of Afghanistan, the society, the community of earth, another former British colony, Addis Ababa, a complete overturning, archaeologist, this place is uninhabitable, striking a match in the middle of the Sahara, the lack of the moon light ever night, light from that reflection, a pretty solid book, Robert Jackson Bennett, City Of Stairs, humbled, colonial oppressors, an investigator, gods afoot, colonialism and reverse colonialism, a society that’s repressed yours, Salim coming to humble, Selene, the moon is the liberator, Jesse’s on team moon: Smash that earth, the theory of the great replacement, not worth replacing those Brits, uninhabitable wastes of forests and wild dogs, climate change, a human response to a non-human event, climate change is caused by humans, agreeing to the science, giant corporations don’t play a role, layers of cynicism and suspicion, the newspaper account, making that up to calm us down, Bryan’s new book, Universities On Fire, John Hopkins University Press, Tantor Audio, Bryan’s previous book, Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, terrible remake, we’ve got this great Philip K. Dick, drill, come back with a can of gasoline, no good comes from people writing shit like that, conflates the issue, the reason this book has a moon crashing is it does something important, The Poison Belt, the introduction to this book, how could the moon actually hit the earth, gravitation aside, Space: 1999, Rocket Ship Galileo, how do you know the back of the moon exists?, a philosophical conversation, not impossible, Martians trying to destroy the Earth, our relationship to the moon and the earth distance, a cloud of interstellar gas, how long would it take?, at what density?, does the calculations, months or years, the Earth’s orbit around the sun, air at sea level, everything would be broken, the status of the moon separating from the earth, the moon is receding, friction of the tides, hopw do you know the moon and the tides are connected?, never mentioned, what is the effect of the tides on the water cycle, wind connected to the sun, the wind is a gas effected by the tides, would the level of oxygen go down in the ocean?, not a hard SF book, the earth’s long term well being, a sharp criticism of humans, heated roosts, raising chicken, light vs. heat, egg production, chickens can be disgusting, he’s done something on your shirt, his love for broody, the love story, the octopus teacher, a scruffy looking cockerel, the only thing available, prideful chicks, an incisive look into a person’s brains, what novels can do, what short stories are for, masterful, so H.G. Wells, hate his characters, silly, wisdom in his dumbness, science fiction as a cozy, do delivery of actual material, reading gothic horror, actual threats and danger, pulling punches, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), a stray planet collides with the earth, depressed by their lives, the conclusion is based on physics, emotional pain, staying home and not talking about what happens to London, Lovecraftian description of the Moon, he uses the word cozy, the life of uncle Henry and aunt Rose, being older, he chooses chickens, he makes a family, cultivate your garden, Jesse with his podcasts, Terence with his blog, Paul with his photography and reviews and gaming, such a dark book, a horror, his surrogate children, taking pride in your car, she’s a hero, his soul goes off, there is darkness here, 20th century British genre fiction, Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven, what we do when we know we only have the night to live, admire that Niven is a such a misanthrope, makes him incredibly incredibly human, the blinding of the human race, something we’ve been working on in the background, we can do it ourself, genetically augmented plants, hedonism, John Stuart Mill, going to shows, epicurean philosophy, what is missing?, no Bruce Willis going to blow up the moon, there’s no guns, becomes violent, played for laughs, that’s not a real problem, he’s ridiculous, the people in government, if I don’t win this war I might loose my seat as the prime minister, let people know how stupid they are, despite how he’s broken, they know he’s egocentric, don’t let him go, you can’t stop him, you have a choice, Eric S. Rabkin again, he’s probably not coming back, a failure of the oedipal romance, the Eden complex, there’s nothing productive, in the desert countries but not here, Threads (1984), the Hartnell years of Doctor Who, it’s teach people about history, they go to Skaro in the second serial, radiation and mutants, the radiation dial, radiation danger, its invisible, something we did something went wrong, why is my hair falling out, another part of Seveneves, two suggestions, Poison Belt, a mere 3 hours, LibriVox, The Angel Of The Odd by Edgar Allan Poe, one of his funniest, The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry, makes total sense, Eric’s been married for 55 years, a very very old story, he’s choking up, of course that makes total sense, [Wilfred Owen], a crying ball of tears, revealing of character, a lecture on The War Of The Worlds, ‘she had counted me as I had counted her among the dead’, the Tom Cruise adaptation, this silly man who’s telling us this story, his own position in his limited society, Jean Luc Godard, Schindler’s List (1993), Life Is Beautiful (1997), grievous circumstances, most of their oppressors go on to live regular lives, The Act Of Killing (2012), a documentary, reenact, The Year Of Living Dangerously (1982), how did you do the killings, a repeated theme, Linda Hunt movie and Sigourney Weaver, The Killing Fields (1984), The Lack podcast, Benjamin Studebaker, Nina Power, a generative lack, Compact Magazine, a 15 minute essay, Freudian takes, labour history takes, really interesting, obscure movies, that is the central core message, the babies are missing, the fecundity aspect, because the egg, a personal recommendation, you get half, are these people richer than me?, fairly die hard, make time to listen to their show, fourth or fifth wave podcasting?, Terence’s videos on first paragraphs of philosophy books, Agent Swarm on YouTube, adblockers on everything, the Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, demonetized years ago, the first apocalypse, evil but water, they’ve added context, throwing it up as a podcast, Anchor FM, HYPER-THINKING THE ABSOLUTE, an AI transcription, Terence anti-Roald Dahled himself, floor to ceiling books everywhere, HD 4k, why Stalin was a megachad, young Stalin, would you let this bank robber into your house, profile people by their books, what are they hiding?, what are they doing?, get rid of books, a terrible feeling, phantom limb, limit the number of incoming paperbooks, kindle collection, its pure evil, we really need to focus on the government factory making the cars, Triumph and MG, they’re all government owned, British Leyland, Range Rover, overseas car industry, a planetary economy then, Brexit, the whole thing with Europe, sovereignist at every level, power and money hungry, that’s the way it is, the treatment of science, the treatment of censorship in the newspapers, the media, radio broadcasts, Conrad Black leaves Canada becomes a British Lord by buying a British newspaper, Lord Black of [Crossharbour], you’re a good old boy now, they all play along, Bezos/Musk, the New York Times owners, Jeff Bezos’s middle name, Preston!, call him by his middle, their nasty side, what did I do?, what have I done?, you will not be upset by reading it, worth the length, 11.5 hours, a very solid novel, a repetition of the same thing, people haven’t learned, avoidance behavior, it starts up all over again, you need the long first part of the book, would it be as gripping or meaningful?, back to Don’t Look Up, David Sirota, parallel thinking, following the same colonialist lines, the anti-science, a very Eric idea, born naked into the garden of Eden, a comedy, a serious topic, a parody vs. an indictment, criticism from both ends, it doesn’t nail the idea of a condemnation, people were reading Meryl Streep as Trump, the Steve Jobs like character, the unhelpful young people, the main lead, Leonardo DiCaprio, reactions, go cultivate the garden, Epicureans vs. go on the news, a delaying action, you’re fighting against the tide, she even forgot her son, a much better movie is 2012 (2009), When Worlds Collide, Edwin Balmer and his buddy [Philip Wylie], proles, plebs, arcs not dugouts, makes it personal, millions of falling buildings, the Y2K disasters, fancies, witchcraft, moral panics, Steven Baxter’s Flood, beyond climate change, Waterworld (1995), over time, a side-plot leads to the sequel, a relentless book, The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine novels, can’t recognize it as water, the data is coming into my eyes, I don’t have a symbol for that yet, why chickens?, the problem of induction, induction is a fallacy, the turkey is fed everyday, it had never happened before so it can never happen, alimentary, artisanal, with ten days food, none of this needed to happen, it’s about human nature, it’s bleak, contingency, lack of induction, moments of productivity and fecundity, a cozier world order, specif people grabbing for power, Churchill, he doesn’t think it is inevitable at all, through Pat, behind uncle’s back, he’s intoxicated, my forefathers were all military men, his sister says he’s getting fat, he’s a young, government mandate, the easy way to become an officer, wounded in WWI, he can’t be pro-war, an unnecessary stupid war, just pride, all the lies, how we got into that situation, David Hume like impossible event, other than the Black Hand, Germany was largely to blame, blank cheque, a great warlord, they’re responsible too, historiography, dive into this in great detail, the opposing view, Barbara Tuchman, send me back in time with a rile and I’ll work on this as best I can, what’s my job, to help the cogs or resist?, finding targets we hope are the right targets, what if we’re wrong?, so I can make the best decisions I can, a careful reader, what caused the Moon to fall, subtle about it, hard to recapture, civilization wide horror, until 1940, the Oxford pledge, WWII occludes, Neville Chamberlain is a fuckup, conventional wisdom got us to where we are now, form entangling alliances, some pickup team, book that Challenger book, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, deep into April, if a pile of gravel filled the North Atlantic, one land mass from British Columbia to Japan, the longest walk ever, a long train ride, from Los Angeles to Vladivostok by train, how many horse archers, how little water overspilled, Terence with two Rs, repeated letters, pirates, two fs and two rs, Arkansas, oversupplied, could’ve saved money, an extra vowel, I am to be, Cartesian, Rene Descartes is not the most popular character in the bible, meditation is a contranym, the Sam Harris style of meditation, handy, talking to young kids, that’s what I studied at university, philosophy is a history of all the mistakes people made about what is, some stuff about what’s pretty, not even wrong, broken from the beginning, eventually Benjamin Franklin doing some science, no snow in Nice, between 7 and 15, the Promenade des Anglais, is Terence’s wife French, the kids went to Australia, Melbourne, On The Beach, Connor Kaye, folk horror, art to illustrate the essays, he’s young, reading an old book, there are people out there that are interesting and interested, making only friends with old people, Jenny Colvin died [probably from her COVID vaccine], boom dead, had she not been in the hospital, Moderna or Pfizer, weird chemicals put into my body, a really good system, pushing it in the province super hard, not a week, Daniel Ellsberg, the pancreatic cancer, not going to do chemo, not with pancreatic, the height of the COVID hysteria, blood clots, the heart, still pushing them, one of the reactions, we’d adapt, becomes endemic, two kinds of corona viruses, flu and corona, made in a lab and leaked out, two competitors, everytime cells replicate there’s a chance of cancer, unless you’re a shark, tissues that are resistant to cancers, engineered a virus, standard government shit we should be on the lookout for it, the newspapers lying, we learn that it’s a lie, and we go for the next lie, they take it in but they don’t take it in, cozy reading, things that confirms, shakes you up, Ancient Apocalypse, Graham Hancock, something of value there, his theory is probably bad, the things he’s pointing to are interesting, Joe Rogan, when confronted, tell me more, we can make oil in a lab, spilled petroleum, a wacko theory, the heart is not a pump, no that’s impossible, that’s not allowed, what if we’re wrong?, being wrong with you beliefs, very bad logic, it wouldn’t shatter my world, I misremembered, somebody who sneaks in, woke up and had three legs, is this a dream?, we can do some fun stuff with this, as something as profoundly familiar, who’s that guy?, he has grey hair and he’s so fat, a question of principle, Erich Von Daniken, in terms of the particular culture, a message to the aliens, fakes evidence, lies, just on principle, wow, what does this mean, that’s science, the phenomenon he’s seeing, why not hot air balloons, I want aliens, a long time ago there was a disaster on the earth, civilization than we think, what archaeology finds, the older things get, somewhere in there, after the dinosaurs (probably), well before 6,000 years ago, rocks aligned to the stars, misreading, we got lots of books and computer games, folkdancing, no podcasts, labouring to get their food, they played a lot, I’m making a circle, what dudes do, maybe this will help us, why do bower birds build their bowers, hot air balloons are more likely than aliens, entirely possible using the tech that they had, dirt piles, we did that, Chariots Of The Gods?, people like dirt bikes, why not, all slaves theory, the slaves built the pyramids, concentrate enough capital, beautification projects, the dugouts, those really in the know knew five years before, the big reveal speech, the vicar, of no use at all, a little contradictory, levels of initiation, where they had an airplane stored, it worked great, everybody loved it, making coffee and fixing little wounds, comraderie with the lower classes, this common goal, enjoy your chicken coop, Jesse’s podcasts, Terence’s blogs, bond wherever you can, feel a bit superior, very prideful about this, on Jesse’s gravestone: the bird in The Raven is not a raven, its really there, old illustrations, does this guy know, a Reading, Short And Deep, The Road Not Taken, trusting, we go centuries reading, I think this bird is not a raven, reading Shakespeare, so sexualized, look at what he’s saying, literal asshole in her ass, the prudish high schools as 2023, the code is not very difficult to crack, The Tempest, fart jokes, the bark, lying under a gabardine, the witches, in Macbeth

First Witch. Where hast thou been, sister?

Second Witch. Killing swine.

Third Witch. Sister, where thou?

First Witch. A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,
And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d:—
‘Give me,’ quoth I:
‘Aroint thee, witch!’ the rump-fed ronyon cries.
Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger:
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.

Second Witch. I’ll give thee a wind.

First Witch. Thou’rt kind.

Third Witch. And I another.

First Witch. I myself have all the other,
And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
I’ the shipman’s card.
I will drain him dry as hay:
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary se’nnights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Look what I have.

Poe: likes dead ladies, a relationship with alcohol, Shakespeare: fart jokes, sex jokes, the Christian brothers didn’t point it out, playing to the absolute base, they don’t have to change his words like Roald Dahl, King Lear, there’s grass there on the verge, killing curiosity, making it dumb, Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, I don’t like his satire, he pointed out in the world, mental continuity broke it down, what’s happening today, newly dated place, look at this, banned from one of them, the mound builders, peer review is the worst thing that ever happened to science, a big circle jerk, electricity from lighting bolts, this Asimov science book, the heliocentric hypothesis, Galileo, Copernicus, obliged to put in his own epicycles, a rule of thumb attitude, string theory being a big waste of time, in trouble, somebody’s lying, no evidence, due for some reexamination, interesting observations and claim, dark matter, dark energy, fucking epicycles on the grandest scale, great for making money, 16th time they put the flying car on the cover, doing math for physics, build more colliders, Sabine Hossenfelder, the end of science, really really abstract theories, higher energy cyclotrons, more abstract than before, Eric Weinstein, UFO bullshit, wasting money and wasting time, sucking their own dicks, Michio Kaku, formally equivalent, given what we know about Galileo’s instruments, persuasive and convincing, holy fuck he was right, confirmation by little effects, the beauty of the thing that’s important, money and fame, that’s just capitalism, science used to be the hobby of rich dudes with lots of free time, I mostly like thinking about lightning, they make the disease, the make the cure for the disease, they control the government and make you have to take it, being retired but fairly wealthy, a schoolteacher, retired at 47, you need time, breed prize hens, willing to buy a telescope, lectures from people who used a telescope, what happens if you do that, listen to the guy who read about a microscope, time, money, curiosity, people are going for the money, pride, the ass-licking to succeed, university professors are never surprised so many of their students, what’s wrong with me, some memorization, kids don’t have much time with their teacher, become a good writer, grammatical sentences, count the mistakes and subtract from the A, the psychology of the teacher as somebody who is overworked, add some humour, make a little joke, stands out, write shorter paragraphs, do something great for the introduction, terrible teachers out there, they’re getting worse, a new curriculum in British Columbia, land expropriated by Canada, having lost all of Alberta, bulldozing Indian land, feel bad for them, competing narrative, studying natives, first nations is the most popular pc term, your job is to go to this website, the teachers getting the kid to do the homework, a flood of this stuff, an Indian teacher who’s an Indian, a whole new industry starting up, first cars coming out of the factory are shit, skip a meal every few weeks, retired but doing other things, covid devastated in person tutoring, asthma, distance education, online teaching is terrible, teaching on an empty ritual, oof, terminal classes, tell them stuff and they laugh, trying to engage students with ideas, the more students you add the harder it is, the more you add the worse it is, science students who could hack, roblox, you make your own games, a Doctor Who thread, 68 and two thirds, Oh Doctor, you’re so gay, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, good as a concept, twisted and morbid, The Last Of Us, scary fungus things, zombies aren’t scary, but blind fungus zombies are scary (probably), pretty good, The Peripheral, the end is silly, fit all the novel in (sort of), second series, a comic William Gibson did [Archangel], Gattaca, The Man In The High Castle, a book is not a film, the show is churn, the way Harry Potter is constructed, Drug Of Choice by Michael Crichton, archive.org, Keys Of Marinus, each episode in this serial is standalone, beautiful silk, gorgeous cup vs. dirty old mug, Jesse’s obsessed with A Wrinkle In Time, E=mc², hot garbage, a Robert Silverberg novel, alien elephants, Downward To Earth, audiobook, Dying Inside, I’ve got a big stack of them in the basement, Passengers, The Book Of Skulls, The Poison Belt, big format, library genesis, good pirate, so many other sources, maybe Christmas in Australia, one r in Terence.

Virgil Finlay, 1964 - R.C. Sherriff's The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

The Hopkins Manuscript

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