Reading, Short And Deep #559

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Crime On Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Crime On Mars was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 1960

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The SFFaudio Podcast #913 – Spacemen Lost by George O. Smith, read by Mark Nelson.

Spacemen Lost was first published as in Startling Stories, Fall 1954

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (3 hours 53 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #558

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Job With A Future by Richard Welles

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Job With A Future was first published in Manhunt, February 1956

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Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Green Eagle Score by Richard Stark

Talked about on today’s show:
happy birthday, Westlake/Stark, so good, Indianapolis, a guy named Stan Deavers, not an officer, in the airforce, upstate New York, flee the scene, at the end, Handy McKay, Presque Isle, Maine, legally inadvisable, the mode you need to be in to get to the thing, a burned out lodge, drawing on his stuff, early 60s late 50s, Korean War era, a volunteer or a conscript, it’s the saluting civil service, writing what he knows, a snowtop, does that on purpose, getting introduced to crime, crime writing, stealing money, roll in the dough, there’s always complications, some hook for this book, the varieties of evil, all different kinds of badguys, Parker on the beach, the machine, he’s got a code, it doesn’t follow the law it follows his laws, Claire, an opportunistic infection, nice way of puttin women, she doesn’t want to know about it, very succinctly put in the first few pages, she doesn’t want to know, the old guy getting out of prison, the broken man, got what it takes, willing to think about it, his ex-wife, she’s got my kid, she’s shacked up with another guy and I’m friends with him, the weak link, the wife, a type, through her psychiatry, working out why she’d married this guy, why she’d left him, takes over the story for a while, he is his own criminal, manipulative, perfectly good reasons for everything he does, second wife, mistress, using his patients as his crew, how subtly Westlake brought across the idea, the questions he asks, how are they planning on getting away, hesitant, meaning exactly the opposite, The President’s Analyst (1967), James Coburn, he’s gonna be the thing that fucks up the score, book 2 chapter 1, she’s not allowed to look at him, characterization, after this novel, that’s bad, she has to talk, how come Parker doesn’t know, a huge fucking problem, a problem throughout, criminals want to talk, tell sex stories and crime stories, tell the same stories, they have to talk, Parker doesn’t have to talk, to solve problems, from his end, she’s falling apart, to get her through, cut loose now that he’s got a sense of power, going home to kill his dad, a theme in here, the last lines of the book, and the casino after, turns her into a wildcat in bed, she doesn’t spend that money at the casino, that idea of risk and insurance, we gotta try to wear belts and suspenders, live our lives, we live at the hotel, Parker goes out for a swim, only asks the questions that are need, the phrase “self contained”, too talkative, garrulous, a mention of Salsa, a fun character, a good reliable guy, until they’re tested, a Parker wikipedia, Trent Reynolds’ The Violent World Of Parker, Westlake’s love of theatre, casting, varieties of evil, the man who was before, a revenge book, changes his identity, his face doesn’t matter, one of the characters had heard about Parker, a little list of characters, all the other Parker names for the Parker movies, that’s pure Westlake, Lynch, Charles Willis, it’s the money man, a dentist?, a mortuary guy, takes the elevator up, driving his big car he feels young, that perfect Westlake psychology, very hardboiled, talk about killing the kid, he can’t help but be funny, Porter, Walker, Archer, something like that, very clever, tippin his hand, writing it for himself, doesn’t even use his name, maybe the character lacks definition, Jason Statham, the Mel Gibson, a pre-reminder of the John Wick movies, a film that captured the hardboiled, Parker making a joke, the way he punctuates his chapters, a different angle, the most memorable villain, his own amateur antics going wrong, a master manipulator, throat cut by his patient, Westlake giving us some opinions, here are my politics, what makes Parker the character we’re interested in so interesting is his massive competence, a lady at a hotel, an ex-madam, runs her mouth all the time and drinks the coffee, these are genuine types, science fiction, thinking about Stanley G. Weinbaum all day, Kim Campbell, cosmic clearance, all the NATO papers, an executive summary, what actions to take or not take, the theoretical framework, how the reins of power work, personalities, maintenance, how universities actually operate, things are not done in committee meetings, they’re formalized, nothing ever happens in the committee meeting, the announcement of what’s already been decided, graft, ass-covering, rewarding your friends, a crime book, they look a lot harder, as long as everybody publicly liked that cop, suddenly the investigation doesn’t get any funding, things get lost, how do you live in the world?, The Sandbaggers, low budget spy-show, James Bond as a reality, agents are disposable, a patriot for some reason, you do think the soviets are bad, make Britain great again, a WWI fighter pilot [Harry Day], laws and regulations are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, how fast they’re driving, conform yourself, a hedge against risk, driving is very dangerous, are you willing to get a self-driving car, your capability, a program outside of your own hands, a very good driver, a very careful driver, the problem happening in the driver’s seat, over the transmission, managing and assessing risk at all time, unacceptable, driving to conditions, in the rain, driving at night, anything perceived as blackness, the fog was incredibly thick, Illinois, Silent Hill, people barrelling past, all manner of idiocy, they’re out there, you can’t assume they’re going to do the smart thing, zen philosophy, why is it a bad idea to go to a psychiatrist, these aren’t tools that you use, too much uric acid, chemical imbalance, maybe you don’t want to just submit, where all this was leading, what’s enjoyable about the Parker novels, we get to feel superior, we get to see these situations, that’s just what I would do, the hyper-competent guy who’s got everything thought out and all together, we can aim at it, competency is the attraction, guessing right, walking the street, what’s going to happen, a problem on the horizon for them, guessing wrong guessing right, modelling somebody’s mind, distracted, bump into things, sleep hygiene, people making bad choices, sometimes surprised, a wise choice, we’re playing a game when reading these books, reading Agatha Christie, like Poirot, formulas to figure it out, puzzles, why science fiction and mysteries are compatible, Westlake as Stark sets up billiard balls on the table, this is not going to lead to anything good, how these good books work, those rules that Stan Deavers needs to learn, to show all the possible things that can go wrong, the mirror image of these books is the Dortmunder, they lose two-thirds of the money, three killed at the hand-off, had everything gone right, go to hide the vehicle, and the money’s gone, not answered in the book, would Parker have given him some catch, Parker would have killed him, stringing-him-along, put up a front, you did good, the one ironclad rule of the Parker novels: if you try to screw Parker you die, he’s gonna kill her too, a person not holding it together, French in The Rare Coin Score, that’s it, when team-members?, people a part of the score still their money, loyal to the people you assemble, pickup style basketball heisting, he gets tested a couple of times, off the guy, off the wife, off the kid, dark humour, what the rules are, 100% up front, where this job might need to go, Fusco, got the money, maybe you go to prison sometimes, you live on the run, down in Puerto Rico, those later books, Ask The Parrot, playing with the titles, very dry, dry jokes, the assessment of the girl of Parker to the psychiatrist, he wouldn’t care about her either, exactly right, she’s surprisingly insightful, I don’t think he’s evil, why is she even in the book, the connection between Fusco and Deavers, disagreements, such a funny tableau, sitting around the table mad at the doctor, tray in his room later, poor assessment, not seeing the psychiatrist would be a problem, a patsy he can use, a little in control, finally control, shooting people, plausible psychological portraits, finding them benign or able to hold their shit together, these people are resources I need to get my job done, stealing more money, the stealing of the money, the money is just an excuse for the job, there’s always a little bit of mistrust when somebody does need the money, he goes to visit his ex-wife, a salesman, selling encyclopedias door to door, Bank Shot, The Hot Rock, another chance to get for this emerald, Kengle didn’t know, a bunch of books, food freezers, are you free for a job, hell yes!, you’re using your skills, fix problems, returning back to homebase, assessing the problem, fixing it, and returning, out of the mentality of needing money, ice cream or having another pony or whatever, will you be happy, hap being luck, happiness is the exercise of vital powers through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, was he happy?, a grouchy old bastard, it wasn’t just fucking and eating, engineers like to make problems, mechanics like to fix problems, a happy river, a shipwright, an ancient Greek king comes to you, they’re all hollow, show off to the other kings, building beautiful ships, teach those skills to someone else, since we all live in this 1967 American society, it’s all a fucking scam, it isn’t about the cruelty, what is necessary to get that thing done, almost like a reverse murder mystery, how to get away with the crime and why, a lot of per-assessment, the uniforms, the band-van, letterhead, nobody gets killed on the actual heist, some risk we didn’t assess properly, go wrong in a way that makes it a book, him looking over the job and deciding whether they meet his exacting standards, Breakout, Slayground, all the post-heist stuff, so many books in the series, definitely one of the better ones, an idea book, not all ideas are equally good, half-way through an idea story, I got a contract to fill, locked inside an amusement park, sounds really cool, kinda not enough there to keep a whole book going, back to Dortmunder, The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution, The Road To Ruin, Drowned Hopes, Bad News, Get Real, read by William Dufris, the voice of Bob the Builder, a tv producer…, what!?, the pay is good, what a crazy book, a private enterprise, money in his pockets, let’s do that, where the title comes from, bizarre, such a period guy, hints here and there, Dortmunder is getting older, when the new books start coming out, Chevvys, Pontiacs, the era is so different, the Rat Pack guys, Frank Sinatra, the internet is not even possibly a thing yet, bizarre man, Levine, cops, deliberately avoided, Lawrence Block’s Evan Tanner, super-hero premise, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, freelance James Bond for revolutions, the revolutionary spirit, the people must be free, a silly premise, sex-adventures, well-written, likes to travel, goes to some place, writes a book, can you write us a new one, Tanner On Ice, he was cryogenically frozen, woken up and decanted and not have aged, such a ridiculous problem, they were willing to publish the whole book series, not quite up to the snuff of your random Westlake novel, Westlake has a ton of short stories, The Letter by Donald E. Westlake, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, August 1965, bear with me, pretty good right?, massive preoccupation, The Risk Profession, A Murder In Hollywood by Donald E. Westlake, an insurance investigator, a very good murder mystery set in the 1970s, a new book, John Lange pseudonym, Stark’s more consistent.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #557

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Secret For Two by Quentin Reynolds

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

A Secret For Two was first published in Collier’s, May 16, 1926

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Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
A Comedy Of Manners, walking the earth, a goodbye to everybody, 14 hours into the 16 hour audiobook, throwing it across the room, the abridged version, read by Robert Vaughn, amazing as a voice actor, The Man From Uncle, maybe that’s not true, the George Wilson narration, Tom Weiner narration, the 1999 cassette version, how difficult it was to get audiobooks back in the day, why everybody is very frustrated with him and his later books, All You Zombies with a lot more pages, promising to be a murder mystery, on page 7, murdered at the table, very unusual for Gwen, lie doggo, why thank you my dear, a treasure beyond price, if I plotted a story, in its classic form, aka the rest of the novel, aka this chapter, right at the end of the book, eight times, so annoying, page 387, anyone who would kill a baby kitten, I despise you, they might be back, Gay Deceiver, my bean gun was exhausted, I explored her handbag, even into battle, the tardis, 12 chocolate bars, 8 in the clip one in the chamber, four darts were still in it, Heinlein!, so frustrating, jerking his readers around, a smart guy, why science fiction is so incestuous, the answer is it should be, it is necessary for good writing, all the different timelines, reconciling his timelines, the future history, a grand unified theory of Heinlein, Podkayne, Variable Star, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, other stuff, Guy De Maupassant, George O. Smith novels, super reliable, always gives you Heinlein, a John Sladek parody of Heinlein [Engineer To The Gods – in Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1972], ai versions of people, sample writing, didn’t think about very much back then, more than once, the problem of this book, repetition of scenes, as big and sprawling as it is, a great roadtrip book, a series of short stories in between, wait thirty words, same voice, different kind of book, incestuous, almost all dialogue, Jubal Harshaw, Stranger In A Strange Land, six other guys, the promise of the book, we were tricked into reading the whole thing, Golden Rule, dystopia/utopia, a very good look at what the Moon looks like, slang terms, they’re culture, time corps, time patrol stuff, a book that bootstraps itself into existence, Bill is the pet for the first three quarters of the book, the Twain line, the villainous nature of the thing, the bullies from the juveniles, the old Heinlein we know, most annoying, doesn’t quite work on its own, in terms of narrative structure, philosophical ideas, snap into focus, The Number Of The Beast, New English Library, spans the front and back cover, The Pursuit of the Pankera, a particular set of glasses, a grimoire, the same character, later in the timeline, the Burroughs family and the Long family, the opposing team is the Time Lords, an anagram of Heinlein’s name, the big bad in this book, the meta, it’s on page 7, the Galactic Overlord, retiring him, By His Bootstraps vs. All You Zombies, solipsism, mispronounced by the narrator, Heinlein teaching, Heinlein haters, you do need to read Heinlein, politics outside of your native bubble, grew to hate Heinlein, they teach Starship Troopers, if they taught Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, good values, very fruitful, the one everybody wants to respond to, weird things, dirty old man Heinlein, dirty young man, dirty middle aged, they don’t edit like they used to, the bestseller’s list, the sexual revolution of the 1920s, Alexei Panshin’s hit-piece, a conservative fuddy-duddy, going off in the woods with your boyscout master, going to Yale, becoming an officer, if you read a Heinlein book long enough you’ll find a transgender character, Mike and Michelle, so much sex and gender stuff, a gay sex scene, all water brothers, a fuckton of sex, never does explicit sex, doesn’t describe the anatomy, an icicle, discuss sexuality frankly, Valentine Michael Smith doesn’t see it, part of that book, the POV character engages, relax and enjoy it, wakes up in bed with Galahad, David Gerrold, male homosexuality is spiritually inferior, very gay, people hating on Heinlein, the Our Opinions Are Correct pair, model minds, anti-Heinlein, what you find, alive on twitter today, might have a trans-flag in his bio, you can’t perfectly model a man’s mind, being associated with group, Quebec by reputation, don’t salute the king, not hurting other people, what does hurting other people mean?, shame or bullying, he’s dead, he cannot fight back, no children to get offended, some advocate there, you might be wrong about what you’re saying, what’s so cool about Heinlein, read his texts, a man who thought all sorts of things, changed his mind, appreciate it differently, I like kittens too, the pitons of the claws of the kittens, not being as tight a novel as it could be, a book worth reading and worth revisiting, vast and sprawling, really excellent, running around on Luna, describing, fresh-looking or red-headed, too many characters, that incestuous ouroboros thing going on, Fritz Leiber’s snakes vs. spiders, Poul Anderson, Asimov, Back To The Future (1985), the closed box paradox, the moral education of Marty McFly, the worldview destruction of Richard, interesting parallelism, cruise ship, a resort version of Babylon 5, Universe, Common Sense, of value, some of the Heinlein greatness, very frustrating, hard science fiction, predestination, freewill, masculine and feminine, community and isolation, he’s teaching himself about how to be a human being, playing with those themes, a different take that builds on each other, the deep alienation endemic to the human condition, a plaything of fate, not having agency, finding peace in the face of a hostile universe, the supposed smart people who run the world, Ray Kurzweil, Robert J. Sawyer, consciousness uploading, rejuvenation, he’s the least interesting Heinlein character, his avatar, Jubal Harshaw, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Murder At The A.B.A. analogs for real people, Darius Dust, a really angry short guy, Harlan Ellison, modelling a real person, he loves Dejah Thoris, Rudyard Kipling, new poem by Rudyard Kipling, fifth Blue Yeti, fiddle with it, the thickness, 16 hours is small by today’s novels, 9000 words an hour, a lot of Michael Crichton, the editors and the marketers, 1985/1986, book club editions, ebooks are big, audiobooks are huge, asking for longer, the economics of publishing, the typesetting costs, optimize the price, an every changing recipe, what do people actually want to read, about the same length, a tight narrative, Mike and Manny and Wyo and Prof, using Marxist tactics, Heinlein defies the categorization of the simplistic, happily cancel for any slights, dressing up as a Japanese lady, a black main character, white hair, how many times does that happen in the juveniles, Tunnel In The Sky, Starship Troopers, Rocketship Galileo, okay bro, okay Heinlein, whatever Heinlein, I’ll allow it Heinlein, how many books aren’t referenced, Pete is not Pixel, the same idea, the same cat, Glory Road, Castor and Pollox, sold themselves into slavery, having too much fun, too self-referential, an experience we’ve never had before, the bad relations with the management, a cruise ship in space, for the shareholders, the fresh new stuff, get Mike back online, natural sequels, Requiem is a sequel to The Man Who Sold The Moon, the spacesuit stuff in here, he cares about how spacesuits react to vacuum, the Philadelphia Naval Yard, a couple of black and white photos, where was he prior to WWII, Leslyn was a scriptdoctor, Destination Moon (1950), George Pal, alcoholic psychosis, Colorado, altitude sickness, a driving book, settling in Santa Cruz, world tour, one world government, H.G. Wells, we’re here now, nationalist, anarchist, pragmatic compromises, writings ruined by selling out to becoming scriptdoctors, Joe Eszterhas, Basic Instinct is not a high minded thing, crappy genre, sex-thriller, James M. Cain, name a book The Postman Always Rings Twice, brutal psychology, borderline personality disorder, appreciated it, being a writer, the model for the style of this novel, wrote confessionals under pseudonyms, he had to have done that, girl sex books, Forest Ackerman’s dead, work for hire, the materials were probably not renewed anway, textual analysis, pretty easy to tell Heinlein, the great secret of the pulp era, comfortable living, true confessionals, pseudonyms, the number of titles that Westlake and Block and Silverberg wrote, dozens for each of them, Michael Crichton novels, adventure novels, a rich kid, the residency, structurally impossible, the setting of Golden Rule is excellent, a reminder of how engineering based science fiction Heinlein is, orbital mechanics, was their Volvo sabotaged?, Nil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, insanely readable, the throw it across the room book, compelled to play at the casino, contrary to initial expectations, a break, For Us, The Living, read between 13 and 22, 2006, Variable Star, a collaboration, he had a podcast, his wife died, Bowen Island, a residential island, the Travis McGee books, thrift store, 20 of them, John D. MacDonald, god that guy could write, he did science fiction, the same way Westlake, throw science fiction across the room, they’re one true love, Heinlein tried to get into mystery, They Do It With Mirrors, an ideas guy, a genre other than science fiction, I’m metafiction now, I’m god, that’s the problem and why it is funny, super quotable, floatin around, the good ones to pull, Notebooks Of Lazarus, *Women And Cats Will Do What They Do*, an a to z quote, a little research, give up on your account, prole feed, algorithm bait, not here for the processed pablum, quite subtle, wrapped in this murder mystery at the beginning, the epigraphs, violence never solved anything – Genghis Kahn, what he’s aiming for, a meditation on hypocrisy, If This Goes On, the entire edifice of western civilization, older and wiser, approach death, Saki, he is one of those people who would enormously improved by death, a gay deceiver, The Story-Teller, a confirmed bachelor, an aunt and nephews and nieces, doesn’t know the answers to anything, “don’t”, “why”, a gentleman’s garden, the kids have questions, he takes the story and inverts it, “horribly good”, introduces a wolf, cowering in a bush, she gets eaten, Saki you’ve done it again, The Interlopers, generations long battle for this land, mighty cold under here, best of friends, their wolves, god’s cruel joke, a funny god, a good bit of fun, it’s good in the sense that it’s good fun, a great read, not a good novel, frustrating, there’s so much in it, the fez, the hat, the shriners, the freemasons, what they are, what they were, he knew a little bit more about what’s going on, pot-bellied and balding, less sinister than could be presented, worth having sex with, a different creed, a fraternal organization, the science fiction future, 2188?, Hazel, Space Family Stone, The Rolling Stones, colonel, doctor, senator, could be another Thorby, a quasi-villaian, why is Tree-San a character, a bonsai tree gets more lines than Bill does, living in the hallways of this dystopia, a kill mission, never resolved, I’m not sure I can believe in a god, Thomas Paine, the internal cultic workings, hermeticism, sun-worship, a way to get your corruption under control and move up the ladder, benign and sinister, a Hells Angel rather than a Freemason, you become part of the system, The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Sean Connery and Michael Caine, a first contact story, stealing a Shriner’s hat, a secret society that’s out in the open, a Masonic hall, a Hells Angels clubhouse, benevolencey drives, landscape terrorism, do their lawns, anarchists of free-association, the officials who operate outside of that, don’t know how to use to apostrophes properly, when you do you have to abide by the rules, what’s his get along to go along, he has no agenda other than working through the ideas, super-fuckin waste, probably the last time that got assassinated, doing something noble?, things that Heinlein gets wrong, drugs, an armoured car heist sort of book, before the show, not super-long, a paperback, marketing to paperback, the library system, the content of the book, astounded to learn, scribner’s juveniles were all hardcovers, illustrations, Nancy Drew or Tom Swift, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Time For The Stars, Waldo And Magic Inc., when we lose materials it’s a loss, psychology is real easy to understand, what the words actually say in the book, a Jack Finney story called The Love Letter, time-travel romance, Somewhere In Time, a love body to nobody, another hidden drawer!, Jack Finney wasn’t writing in the 1990s, 1882, 1994, they just updated it, you can’t fuck around with people’s words, he was gay enough as it was, don’t delete anything, easy to understand the importance of the primary text, it was okay, influenced by Heinlein, you can respond without lying about it, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, conventional, cutesyer, disturb the world he comes from, a frisson, the internet, the forums, the most sparky, helps tell the story of the world in a really interesting way, Ender’s Shadow, not a sequel guy, his worst are also excellent and better than most, more pure of heart, less incestuous, necessary for the form, might as well allow it, the late 1940s, writing mythology, ancient myth, archetypes, origins and generations and whatnot, thematic weight, explicitly on the exandry hunt, from far away, okay you go girl, all fun and fine, “other better writers”, male on male gay sex, what age is appropriate, ‘husband height’, leaps around, ‘husband high’, how people get reproduced, the very idea is disgusting to most people, Amish Planet, the pneumatic amish internet, when kids were getting married, in the Ozarks, the last holdout of child marriage, a subject of scandal, a social crusade on the part of WASPy culture, Jerry Lee Lewis’ shenanigans, not old enough to vote you can’t have children, fuck you on your on-high, Edgar Allan Poe seemed to really love his 13 year old cousin/wife, her death killed him, a perpetual alcoholic delirium, John Wilkes Booth was a freemason actor time traveler, John Allan, a lot of anti-Masonic stuff going on, might have been killed by the masons, a prominent critic, lawsuits with people, at least two stories where it’s very clear, one of the Masons, very chummy fellows, it was like a war in the 1840s, they ran the whole show, a potent political force, the nature of secret societies, the populist instinct, The Cask Of Amontillado, the guy he kills is a Mason, bricks him up in the wall, set in Italy, really choice, the whole thing is a confession, a deathbed confession, Montressor, my treasure, the villain of the piece, Fortunado, lucky, his family motto, why does this story exist?, they are not just for us, a political treatise, discover of something, The Raven, he is denying its, what bird does, it’s a psychopath, get out my fuckin door, surely she’s up in heaven waiting for me, negative answer, it’s only stock-and-store, an awesome piece, The Philosophy Of Composition, not show the bird, presented to us so young, on The Simpsons, freshman English, Annabel Lee, A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner, a nested narrative, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, contraposes that beauty, radiant maiden, my bride, kids, it’s not consummated until its consummated, always a maiden and always dead, an eternal theme, immortality is worse than love and death, a mighty theme, he’s back again, a man confronting god, this giant sea creature, homosexuality, married to Queequeg, squeezing out a lot of juice, the interactions of the themes, as an intellectual exercise, works the theme out, a happier cable, The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a nice old lady, you can mash it up, cheap and fast, you can share it, the restricted market where it was hidden, The House Of The Seven Anne Of Green Gables, an occult cookbook, the empty, Tennyson, an investigator named Charlene Dexter Ward, a great narrator, Very Bad Deaths, John Dortmundery style, the chronology, the seeds of the different novels, early in the juvenile era, girls of a certain age, Hadrian’s Flight, The Wolf Of Venus, Secrets Of The Heinlein Juveniles, mildly dyslexic, if it is dense enough, The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft, excitement and joy, they don’t trust, a Borges non-fiction, his poetry’s not very good, his anti-Masonic story, Death And Compass, reviewing King Kong when it was in the theatres, he wrote a Lovecraft story, Heinlein stops reading after a certain point, stopped reviewing publicly, the subtitle of the book, where the book goes wrong, Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam, killing is more of a hobby with me, long talks between meals and sex, six Heinleins all in the room, in most Heinlein, bathos and pathos, Pixel dies off-screen, the bit right after they break up in Hong Kong Luna, Walker Evans, a secret society, it has no meaning, it’d be like not knowing who Marilyn Monroe was, the most iconic photographs of the Depressions, he lives with a poor family, having sex with the wife, there is no Walker Evan, a message, a code to remind me of a debt, one of the mighty themes of this book, the setup is so good you need to have it paid off, it’s a closed circle, looking at your old photos of you in previous decades, living in the 1930s, carrying his own tools, Drinkwater, Saskatchewan, J. Daniel (Jim Gifford), A Reader’s Companion, The Heinlein Society, Mr. Pulpcovers website, a little New York Times blip, wrap it up, almost Heinlein length, excited, Heinlein and he met, a champion, he’s still great, Rah, Rah, R. A. H.!, a Canadian liberal, American draft dodger liberal.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #556

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Night He Cried by Fritz Leiber

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Night He Cried was first published in Star Science Fiction Stories (1953)

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #910 – “Hellcats Of The White House” by Paul K. Willis – this satire of the then current politics was first broadcast on CBC Radio, Tuesday, December 22, 1987.

There’s a crisis on Wall Street!
U.S. oil supplies have been cut off!
Alan Greenspan is called to the White House where President Ronald Reagan likens the present position to that time he was on submarine duty during WWII in 1957.
The nation teeters on the edge of a complete economic collapse.
The Iranians, and their anti-ship missiles, are blocking the Strait of Hormuz!
How will the Gipper’s get America out of the looming Depression?
Invade Managua!
Maybe, you can live in your car?

written by Paul K. Willis

Featuring the voices of:
Frank Daly
Diane D’Aquila
Richard Donat
Ray Landry
John Stalker

engineered by Ray Folsek

sound effects by Bill Robinson

produced by Tom Shipton

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #555

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Tomlinson by Rudyard Kipling

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Tomlinson was first published in National Observer, January 23, 1892

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
a 2026 novel, Michael Crichton, evocative, the narrator, Ray Porter, sorta simple, which detective he’s modelling, a theory, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, H.P., except for the egg part, fussy, bragging about how great he is, a good beach read, fast paced, well told, Hollywood insight, the document we’re reading is supposed to come from, I can bring up those details if you want?, supposed to be talking, a recorded conversation, an after action report, seduce some co-ed, self-aggrandizing, in a bar with a double scotch, exactly where he is, who actually did the murder, second reveal, not a full reveal, the title, an accident in Hollywood, why are there ten more pages, oh the murder, film sets, kinda know what a gaffer is, was a film director, in 1973?, even while in medical school, The Andromeda Strain, the people at med school learned he was writing, the book is Binary, A Case Of Need, made by Blake Edwards, didn’t age well, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, A Shot In The Dark, The Great Race, The Pink Panther, Westworld is filmed in the west, like a period piece, set in a fictional old west town, already a meta of the thing, when did Michael Crichton go to Arizona, a 1959 article by Michael Crichton in the New York Times, the forward to this book, wow!, 13, pesky kids, prodigious kids, he had a typewriter, when Clark Ashton Smith hit the newspapers he was very your, California boy writes poetry, a big deal, thick thick, Lovecraft was all over his newspaper, a column on astronomy, what’s going on in the skies right now, arguing with astrologers, can all this novel be explained by Michael Crichton being a Scorpio, way to simple, throwing that in there, not supposed to make that character look good, our narrator is kinda like Dr Watson, A Study In Scarlet, it doesn’t quite fit, the least popular Sherlock Holmes thing ever written, a fakeout at the core of the murder scene, RACHE, written in blood, German for revenge, a lot of stuff like that, trying to solve the mystery, taking note of the camera, and the repeated mention of the nitrogen ram, fell and hit his head, the window open, for the insurance, Sherlock Holmes cares about justice, Perkins, I’m not the police, reporting to the studio heads, so thorough and so Sherlock Holmesy, I like to think no, dismissed Clete so thoroughly and quickly, Alex is right, he’s also a mercenary, the very first line of the book, we’ll make it right, how you gonna keep Clete out of it?, what he was hired for, very damning of Hollywood, everything is corrupt, those girls at the airport, fancy meeting you here, our hero is the cut-out, how are we getting this text, it doesn’t matter what’s real, renovating his place, painted to look like real wood, in the 70s, such a modern complaint, obviously been on a movie set, shadowing Robert Wise, if this was from 1973, if he was going to publish it as John Lange, hurt him a little bit, so revealing, lost in the shuffle, switched to writing as Crichton, finished book, super-polished, nice and concise, it can get quite ponderous, a hefty paperback, it’s not more than what it is, almost reads like a novella than a full length novel, very tightly written, dwell on a lot of things, red herrings to distract you from an important, this girl is crazy, a lot of characters, keeping all the names straight, the names in this, distinctive and memorable, map them to real people, who’s the Yul Brenner in this book?, part of the point of what he’s doing, our ultimate villain, killing his own stuntman, what the plot of Blood Rock is, a time of transition, teaching old values, what we get of the script, revenge, stealing women, acting on stage, people standing and giving lines, the way it is cut up for film, stand around doing nothing, somebody dropped a prop, the actors have to keep the show going, a Murder on the Avon, related to the film being axed, turned out great, made money, Madame Bovary, stunts, tripped going in the house, a drawing room, the Moana remake, a clip floating around, runs down the mountain, greenscreen, The Sound Of Music, slide, you couldn’t possibly expect…, westerns, reliable, horror movies, as a murder mystery this is a good book, was he murdered?, an open question, we gotta replace the writer, blackmailing, to get more money, he didn’t deliver anything, the female lead, Sally Oldman, Sally Vega, Suzy Vega, a name to give to a blonde, fired for incompetence, she’s blind and no one knew, can’t hit her marks, we got a really good insight into studio staging, on location, he’s great at what he does, wrung out the possibilities, a little lesson, the publicity guy, he has to be everywhere he has to do everything, he knows every person who has any responsibility for making the movie a success, the perfect piece to pick, calling it out, how could it possibly be a series?, the assistant to Perkins, insurance fraud, why Murder She Wrote is stupid and funny, wherever this lady goes there’s suddenly a murder, Cabot Cove’s murder rate, a cosy farce, stolen things, blackmail letters, very few murders, submarine plans went missing, fairly high-tech, bicycling, bodybuilding, the power of bicycles, you don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to house it, faster than walking, to increase your power, you’re there, very empowering for women, run over or poked, turns out to be protecting her, totally up for more Michael Crichton, by another hand, assume what a sequel will look like, accurate, how much drugs were happening in the 70s in Hollywood, they’re all on pills, nobody was sober, the psychiatrist to Marilyn Monroe, axed, only the one scene, that guy aint good, killed herself/murdered, she did not have a happy life, a huge star, that song is so annoying, recycled that for her, very Hollywood, the Oscar list of stars who had died, who they don’t put on there, Stagecoach (1939), a period piece, not enough name recognition, Jurassic Park movies, people love Dinosaurs, the brand, Prey, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Netflix could do a thing with this, they do a lot of terrible things, the original Westworld on Netflix, a staple of HBO, the audience for it is not a film audience anymore, Prime, a subscription, promoting things, they’re so focused on kissing scenes, this is not the movie audience, too expensive and too few things looking forward to, experienced well in the movie theatre, being in the theatre, wasted my fucking money, who is the audience for A Murder In Hollywood as a film, break up into 6 episodes of someone, isn’t it weird they translated that, Westworld the movie, some of his best novels are movies, instead of writing the book, Looker (1981), reading Predator, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and Total Recall, make ai actors, it’s a murder mystery, it stars Albert Finney, a plastic surgeon, a little fix, an evil James Coburn is an ai bro, the liferights to the ai actor, there is no book, the book is the movie, a great read, a great movie, which one is better, the film stock, still set in a similar time, Runaway (1984), as a book, his ideas are what makes him a great filmmaker and a great writer, he could throwaway something like this, leave that in a drawer, the dinosaur hunting one, and the pirate one, another drawer novel, digging up fossils, early paleontology, some stuff about how fossiling has always been an industry for faking, fake hominids, H.G. Wells, entertainment, drawing an audience, the most accurate representation changes every 10 years, what looks cooler?, about the size of the chicken, sharper teeth, the Jurassic World movies, the new super-dinosaur, we built them that way, designed to look cool, none of this is real, Triumphs Of A Taxidermist: A Confidential Conversation by H.G. Wells, the history of candy, rot and corruption, name drops, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Blackstone picked up all the John Lange books, the new one, one of the few independent publishers, readable books, magic professional version, twice in recorded history, in 1066 we invaded England, 1634 moved to Maryland, persecution, English recusant Catholics, Lord Baltimore, the title, an Irish name, lose the lands, learned a thing or two, a fun book.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #554

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Desperation by Joachim H. Woos

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Desperation was first published in Manhunt, December 1960

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #908 – The People Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard (28 minutes) read by Connor Kaye and Stragella by Hugh B. Cave (1 hour 15 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
The SFFaudio Podcast, who is this Hugh B. Cave guy, and H.P. Lovecraft were from Providence, a beef, quoting Samuel Johnson, anybody who writes for anything other than money is a fool, the pure amateur, a beef over magazines, some amateur society, the representative for this area, a $10 fee, in their documented letters and interviews, hand-written letters, twitter in longhand, is exceedingly brilliant, a better artist than his theories indicate, a splendid story, Dead-Man’s Belt, the main characters are black, living in the city dump, stretch your legs a little bit, philosophy of why anybody writes anything, wrote poetry for free, miss a class, wouldn’t tutor for free, the money is necessary to take it seriously, a rationalization, put his writing behind other people’s writing, his good name, seeing the two here, the superior story?, wow!, bold claim, better than Stragella, not an S-Tier Robert E. Howard story, crab-man story, a first draft, an attempt at something, Black Vulmea, Isle Of Pirates’ Doom, ideation, setup, the whole war with the crabs is one page, great concept, out for vengeance, he died, where’s the rest of my story, 2 more chapters, The Cave-Girl, fightin trogladytes, I Am Legend, the weird telepathic crystal, dungeon full of human people, scribbled it down, later famous and dead, desperate for more Howard, strung it out, so short, the PDF is 11 pages, it’s really short, not two columns, you could do a sequel to this, self-contained it was, this is a note in a bottle, another 3 bottles, I found more paper and another bottle, short and hideous history, the red hour, dawn, blood and dawn, perfect Howard, the backstory, where’d she get that airplane, she’s Amelia Earhart, goggles and white scarf, Genndy Tartakovsky of Dexter’s Lab and Primal, from Manila to Guam, he goes mad with crab rage, moans over that, did they eat her?, experiments, super-creepy, this weird lab, grafted into a crab body, weird crab mad science, developing hands instead of clippers, give me something, an iron rod, very sketched, a complete story, not quite as Almuricy as Almuric, who would be the market for it, horror weird thing, The Noseless Horror, the mongolian werewolf, the guys who loved King Kong, 20 pages, down endings, Chinatown (1974), so horrible, suicidal charge, a little more crab meat, cracking of their shells, some kind of actual vengeance, doom the species, they’re afraid of him, super-intelligent and advanced, the kind of crabs they are, japanese spider crabs the size of horses, basalt island that goes up in tiers, feels artificial, a redoubt, why are they not in the water, a little more story, he managed to sneak in his favourite thing, he is the barbarian, always the goodguys, the guy from the backcountry, a counterexample somewhere, maybe Solomon Kane, atavistic throwback, a guy on the frontier, flying in the high tech thing, contemporary America, lots of cool stuff, charismatic magnetism, everything’s telepathic, A Princess Of Mars, the alien though process of the crabs, to impinge upon, unnamed narrator, Robert E. Howard running around on the beach, really fun, in those eyes, not even fear or hate, looked at in that manner, even the eyes of a human enemy, a certain acceptance, a worm about to be struck, they never could fathom, we were of different species!, of diverging order, exterminate some pests, is it possible that all life came from one stem?, they had progressed, along different lines, watching them do their homework, walkin sideways, so suggestive, guided by definite though inhuman thoughts, cutting off the need for more explanation, his version of The Shadow Out Of Time by H.P. Lovecraft, more explicitly ancient, it’s not a coast, wedding cake shaped island, looking for this story on google, please stop, the only way you’re going to find it, a very obscure story, 1969 publication, lots of good things to like about it, vampires vs. giant crab alien people, confused, the story got the cover, a scene depicted, Stragella is standing in front of people, a tiger, a giant snake, when that happens in the story, its called an “orgy”, ghosts?, the vampires bring them back to life to torture them again, a vhs tape being replayed, they can’t become vampires, reenacting their deaths, for our own amusement, makes the story more spectacular, in their to get the cover, a great cover, the other illustration, in the rigging, holding the lantern, looking down into the hold, until the firearms came out, supposed to be a contemporary story, 1932, Miggs, the dying copanion, Knells Yancy, psychoanalysis of the story, understatedly smart, gets to Serbian, set in the Indian Ocean, the Bay Of Bengal, they ate everybody, the Demeter from Dracula, the permanent coffin base, hide it off the coast, come to land and feed, a good scheme, they need some netflix though, as a vampire story it is very good, the double setup, William Hope Hodgson story, the giant sea snakes, like vultures, a derelict ship, super-poetic, written to order, it’s too long for what it is doing, a chronology of the story, lost in a storm, a persian priest who jumped over board, drank salt water, floating, the fogbank, enshrouds the ship, a tramp frieghter, bring back tramp freighters again, make tramp freighters again, Captain Katanga in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, tramp freighter media, admiring it, how he got the tattoo, draw whatever you like Professor, ornate crucifix, walks around with her shirt open all the time, double protection, the ship’s bible tucked into his belt, too obvious, overly constructed to do what he did, suddenly it turned out to be, video game item pickup, a scrap of paper, it was in the bat boxes, like a videogame, a big long rpg like FALLOUT, a new mission, item discovered, the next action sequence, a novel or a lot shorter (a third off), this has potential to be excellent, where to put the blame, he does the poetic, wailing of a dead wind, good opening, not Lovecrafty, horror vibe from the 30s, not enough here for what is here, why is it just Miggs?, Miggs is there to die, sniffing the flowers, what’s up with the flowers, the cursed flower, smelled too sweet, Strega Nona Russian witch character, Strigoi, straggling, the flowers are coming out of her coffin specifically?, the ghost scene, apes, the tiger, monkeys, the Indian crew, she goes to each of them, they become skeletal after she caresses them, her mom and dad?, all supposed to be Serbian Gypsies, add more characters to be eaten, the afterword, the Andaman islands, seems like years, characters don’t do anything, he pulls up the anchor, sets the ship adrift, holes the ship, sets it on fire, he’s a sailor, their coffin ship, isn’t this fucking cool, CRAB PEOPLE!, maybe they’re building a rocketship to go to other dimensions, their whole history, every parts, The Night Wire by H.F. Arnold, a double man, what Edison was, two mens jobs at the telegraphy machine, different messages, witchcraft!, weird party trick, a useful man, his whole Edisony thing, horror movies, watch the VHS tape, the lady in the well, The Ring (Ringu), a foreshadowing of, Robert Barbour Johnson’s Far Below, Lovecraft’s ghouls in New York, a war of extermination, genocide is my job, in the television adaption, so traumatized, the old chief, you turn into a ghoul if you stay down there long enough, it’s his wife, quite short, a swift kick punch, short on action, quite nice, this amazing little classic, here’s another Dracula, wildly popular in his time, named on the cover, wrote a lot of stories, no one talks about him anymore, suggesting that it was a weird menace story, Terror From The Deep, much more Dracula than anything else, a nautical Dracula story, the genres, weird horror, more towards the horror, the style in which it was written, high poetic language, Spaceway, don’t let that influence you, these are aliens, aliens from the ocean, do they harvest under the water?, we never go into the cliffs, so attenuated, more tantalizing than anything else, snipped off his girlfriend’s hand, keep goin, how great could it have been?, ideas awesome, more of him in the raging vengeance mode, very little bashing, down for more weird menace, is it anywhere close to the top of anything in Weird Tales?, no, enjoyed it, very solid, b plus, a grading system, had it been a third shorter it could have been two thirds better, or make it 4 hours, too long for what you get, what is a novel for, what is a movie for?, when most people say they want to be a writer…, they know what the shape of a novel is, how interesting the idea is, with only Miggs (along with Yancy), where the story fucks up, in the captain’s cabin, he finds two bottles, he leaves them there, later he goes back for them, putting together a really tight plot, why someone needs to be alone, it should be a perfect jigsaw puzzle, why did he leave those behind?, random, like computer game logic, the tarpaulin, tarpaulin is cloth embedded with tar, what’s the etymology of tarpaulin, maybe it needs another pass, tightening up, could be a vampire classic, as maximally awesome as possible, a big fan of maximally awesome, an episode of Primal, dumps out of dinosaur and caveman, Victorian haunted house, as you would expect anyway, the ring of Thoth Amon, past lives, serpent man, modern people wrapped up in a prehistorical cursed adventure, almost completely wordless, Pingu, Mr. Bean, functionally a silent film, Wings In The Night, massive font, that maximally awesome, Hills Of The Dead, standing on top of a cliff being attacked by hordes of zombies, nobody has done it as well, doing it without the dialogue, in the UK they had a theatrical release, see them in the movie theater, I guess we’re done, still on team People, on the crab people’s team, an invader in their land, take over Manila, colonize Guam, get the fuck off our island, going ham, locking in, crashing out, roid rages, reefs around the island?, ran out of fuel, a seaplane?, make it a novel, coast in to shore, whatever horrible vengeance, zip up his arm, so suggestive, one of his best stories, weird mysterious fog bound islands in the Pacific, fragment of Lemuria, a giant fence, ancient ruins, primitive natives, a new one, Fragment by Warren Fahy, way off Australia, the last piece of some ancient supercontinent, mantis shrimp, copper based blood, The Uncharted Isle by Clark Ashton Smith, they can’t get off the island, get in and explore it, eating through the tanks, eat everything, a Michael Crichton knock-off, Jurassic Park, off of Costa Rica, a list of stories that are that, 11 pages, same as Stragella, ghosty stuff, sacrificing their children to an ape gorilla god, oars for his boat, escapes the island, one of the oars is over the bar, island stories are essentially like science fiction stories, Star Trek, planet of the week, The Odyssey, from island to island, different guest host relationship problem, will watch in theater, refusing to see things for twitter reasons, Nolan movies, he has a problem with sound, why does he do that?, he doesn’t care about dialogue, just doesn’t matter to him, greyer and greyer, set photos, filmed on location in Greece, azure sea, ashcloud everywhere, stripped all the colour out of it, people on twitter, ai fixing silent movies, people ai fixing Nolan movies to make them more colourful, silent films are difficult to watch, take title cards that are used, The Mark Of Zorro (1920), Safety Last (1923), really good solid jokes, soundtrack, stings, none of that was recorded, sometimes you see the actors saying words, impersonator, maybe subtitles, he objected, the mouth moves a whole lot, lip read what he’s saying, the title card with what the guy’s saying, playful and smart, solved rather quickly, A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton, random virals vs. mutual, the joke about the nobody wrecked your home, he doesn’t like humour, being clever and witty, comes back to punish him, hubris, why Helen of Troy killed Agamemnon, two different characters played by the same actress, their not twin sisters, to such an extreme degree, led to some confusion, subverting something.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #553

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Malay Krise by Clark Ashton Smith

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Malay Krise was first published in The Overland Monthly, October 1910

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Talked about on today’s show:
Space Plague, the Spanish title: Caminos Occultos, 1956, 1955 for the serialization, a 70s vibe, the previous book was more 50s, the way the space drive worked, a road book, a plague from space?, no space, pick from the following writers, Floyd C. Gale, Sam Moskowitz, Sturgeon, which do you like, let’s here from Sturgeon, Adventure Science Fiction, November 1957, type and time, buy it instead of food, selling you on, revised paperback, the field needs more of this by George!, a review of Two Sought Adventure, the shortest review, another?, Analog, July 1968, E.E. Doc Smith, both scientists, interplanetary communication, telepathy and dirty work, so John W. Campbelly, Satellite, February 1957, resident review, Gnome Press, the electronic laboratory, the pace and high level of interest, one of the years best fantasy books of the year, pretty positive, the first Hugo awards, it’s a science fiction novel, a lot of it was fantastic, Floy C. Gale’s five star shelf, lie Bester in The Demolished Man, an ESPer, a car pile-up, a perceptive such as he, his fiance has disappeared from the car without a trace, a tickling memory, something wrong with the highway signs, tangled of morass of paths, Mekstrom’s Disease, you’ll go for this, hardboiled dialogue, all positive reviews so far, from Infinity, Damon Knight, the yearest dumbest sounding title, an underground organization, from Maine to California, the fleur-de-lis, disarmingly cheerful and vigorous, the only known carrier, pretend she was never there, woman-hunt, hypnotized from, Rhine institute, a telepathy or clairvoyant, surprising firmness, psionic dead stop, neologism, #you dirty slob#, Heinlein’s worst, the virtues of first rate science fiction, a lot less superficial than it used to be, to stand there and watch the eyes of a woman, poignant touches, cheerful bloopers, the law of least reaction, piracy and pillage, in the realm of grammar, a tin-ear, science fiction is literature, I hope that whomever he was, Astounding, 1956, P. Schuyler Miller, Van Vogtian melodrama, a rattling good yarn, incurable fatal, they disappear, an ingenious network, much action, rapid juggling, out before the deadline, Anthony Boucher, easily Smith’s best book to date, wild melodrama, seeking to control a mysterious disease, indestructible supermen, plot contrivance, unflaggingly excitingly, rich in typographical errors, what do you think Goodreads has to say?, a 3.68, slightly above the average, full of misogyny, the bad guys are woman haters, really interesting, the ESP, a road trip, Venus Equilateral, in Astounding in the 1940s, a rocky relationship with John W. Campbell, a Scott guy, an electronics guy, tons of parallels between this and Hellflower, a road book with lots of cars, not as good as Westlake, the venn diagram, people who write in a plain way, super-effective, exactly the same set up as the last one, before the book started, a space accident, she wasn’t there in the first place, tapped to be a secret spy, go undercover, he thought he did it himself, exactly the same plot, different baddies, intriguing, a space accident later in the book, the girl crashes the car, the art for the original serial, April, May and June 1955 issues of Imagination, a woman stepping out of a completely wrecked car, a 227 page PDF, introducing the author, create loyalty to the magazine by making the authors real, William Hamling, cluttering up science fiction magazines, 100,000 words per year, I write science fiction because…, 20 years in the electronics field, oatmeal box, a radio set of my own build, atoms were still indivisible, Mt. Wilson, distant galaxies, “island universes”, Pluto was confirmed and named, astronomy and celestial mechanics, liberally peppered, honest fact and bafflegab, a technical background, just excluded almost every modern science fiction writer, a traffic ticket for jaywalking in Cincinnati, fell heir to a typewriter, magazines pay money for printable material, writing yarns that I like to read, 3 subsequent replacements for item 1, melodramatic, a hotel detective, everybody is gaslighting him, one of the most damning indictments, a stuff happening book?, the gaps and the ESP and all that, two different groups with solutions from a disease, different motivations for wanting to keep it secret, make it for the elites vs. give it to everybody, almost a Simak idea underneath, sees evil in the world, going for a walk with your best girl and your dog, my girlfriend is a liar, overall pretty good, not just stuff happening, not a comics guy, totally X-Men, mostly action things, clairvoyance and remote viewing, on the bullshit wagon, ESP things, maybe there’s something to some of this, fucking testing this forever, the dead areas thing is never explained, natural depleted mana zones, the Niven method, The Magic Goes Away, a wasteland of telepathic ability, not reproducible, the dead area kind of explains that, underexplained, scratchin my chin at the end, the Rhine institute, making everybody telepaths and espers, the heroes, Professor X, the gene, a cross or a helix, recruited to help humanity in a secret way, the League Of Evil Mutants, are we the baddies?, lead by Gandalf (Magneto), in the concentration camps as a Jew, on a mission to let any of his people be controlled or killed by the government, not on the government side, what to do in a post-mutant society, what this book is about, the medicalized rhine society, doctorates of telepathy and physiognomy, all of them have superpowers, Cyclops, shoot light out of his eyes, they get pounded on all day, Wolverine, hardened skin, nearly indestructible bodies, this strain coming out of Analog, call from his mom, his father had died in the night, a twitter thread, an essay by Mark Twain, Mental Telegraphy, a letter came to him, travelling with his lawyer, held the letter up to his head like that Johnny Carson bit, it is kinda uncanny, if you squint a little bit, really well explained, driving down the highway, radio and microwave radar, listing to something happening elsewhere, almost like telepathy, to see through things, what an MRI or x-rays, knowledge and speculative thoughts, if those were in human bodies, make it longer, that happens some more, another one by George O. Smith, much like Simak, shares that space with Simak, in the Fishhook book, Time Is The Simplest Thing, so many gimmies at the beginning of this book, I bought it, he sold it, some of his books are like a kitchen sink, feels like thinking through, feeling your way, ends quite abruptly, why the book exists, a common technique in writing, a space, a page break, capitalization of the first word, doesn’t show up well in audio, the coda without saying coda, inoculating the families of the victims, we’re still underground for two reasons, unless you have trouble, Steve Junior, further plans, what makes the book even better, stop at the gas station to fill up, cleaning the windshield, at the spinner rack near the checkout, this makes it an underground book, written for the underground, what’s this book really about, about the underground railway, they look like us but they’re not like us, it isn’t about racism, it’s about moral intention, the question of race, how do you tell if someone is good or bad, perceive them with your esper skill, they’re intention is good, team elite or team bottom up, the tension between the two, this figure within the movement, us reading it and saying I’m inspired, these groups have merged, defeating the baddie at the center, reorientation, Babylon 5, Brad Dourif, [Passing Through Gethsemane], entirely demolished, built up from a blank, he suffered demolition, did our hero get manipulated to do everything in the book, hypnogaged?, sniffing out the highways in hiding, the whole world becomes maybe, there stories line up, a solipsism, the girl was against him, what do you do with that, not quite on the level of The Demolished Man, this might have been a science fiction classic that everybody talks about, these three concepts, there comes to be a character who is both telepath and esper, one of the best movies ever to come out of Hollywood that’s an original science fiction idea…, Rogue One, The Book Of Eli (2010), Gary Whitta, he’s not blind because he sees the world as god sees it, or as Daredevil sees it, the best literary exploration of this, innovative things, following the letter, a piece of his girl’s cloth, he goes and sits by the mailbox, Apple airtag, a psychic airtag, a book in your desk drawer about me, not this, Van Vogtish, every 2000 words change everything, he does spark, long enough to do the thing, quite beautiful to explore, things blossom in conversation, this big Simak read, books that don’t use action plots, making the girls more girly, his thinking voice, his writing voice, she [Jessica Martin] had to do all the girls, if she [Jessica Martin] could have been a male narrator, a very excellent narration, miscalculated, Spacemen Lost aka Lost In Space, the alien spaceships were watching and waiting, The Fourth “R”, an electromechanical educator, a stuff happening book!, extraordinary intelligence, Operation Interstellar, those who don’t want him to succeed, Three Skeleton Key, in the Atlantic, waiting for rescue, covered in rats, the rats took over the ship, they ate the crew, this tall tale, swarm all over the lighthouse trying to get in, a really good radio drama, waves of rats, taking over their little island, thousands of them, the same appeal as all the zombie stories, they’ve taken over, a horror story, Leiningen Versus The Ants by Carl Stephenson, I am German I will stop it, the story of a siege, escaped from a prison, Papillion (1973), like Playboy without the nudes, Esquire, catering to the same class, high class rich middle class set in the 1930s, Fred Greenhalgh, Suspense and Escape, radio drama can do things that nothing else can do, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, J. Daniel Sawyer, his name came up, got to his website, auto-didactic, talking about Heinlein stuff on twitter, For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein, the plot barely exists, get out of the house, now they go to San Fransisco, a crush on, in the future you can like more than one girl.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #552

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Cab That Waited by Don Mark Lemon

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Cab That Waited was first published in The Black Cat, March 1906

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #906 – Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith, read by Jessica Martin.

Highways In Hiding was first published in Imagination March, April, May, June 1955.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (9 hours 1 minute) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #551

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem |PDF|.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird was first published in 1917

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about Time For The Stars by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
Time For The Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Raistlin and Caramon, twin boys, one becomes a wizard and the other becomes a muscleman, lawful evil and lawful good, wow, this is really cool, illustrations!, you don’t get that anymore, there’s a checklist, who wrote this book?, he marries his grand niece, Time Enough For Love, The Door Into Summer, the young girl is grooming the older man, her plan works out, Heinlein’s relationship with Ginny, he wrote it on her honeymoon, I’m a cradle robber, the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, already descending into alcoholic psychosis, Leslyn went so far around the bend, back together, ran away and got married, honeymooned at a hunting cabin in Colorado, he’s looking for the door into summer, wrote the whole book in a week, an older bitter woman, write what you know, Dan Davis, Ricky, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, Heinlein was definitely Kipling pilled, Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, Thomlinson, The Gods Of The Copybook Maxims, M.I., mobile infantry, he’s a book guy, how engineering and invention works, a house robot, Bill Christensen, the robot that doesn’t work properly, MG, the Lucas Electrical Systems, as all the boomers are dying, they don’t make the parts anymore, the prince of darkness, they chose positive for the ground, prior art, six months to a year, much better, Toyota MR2, the literary allusions in this book, A Picture Of Dorian Gray, walks in and sees his twin brother there, the Long Range Foundation, the Howard Families Foundation, The Long Now Foundation, something people don’t actually believe but is very true, the world’s richest man, his inspirations are more Heinleiny, Peter Thiel is all Tolkien, Palmer Lucky, seed round, Grok, massive impacts, the right hands at the right age, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, [the Bobbsey Twins], to argue with Heinlein, a statement, all wars are wars of population conflict, Malthus, that hasn’t ever been the case, in a starvation setting, you could argue it into that, make breathing room, living space, super-taboo at the moment, Isaac Asimov, Make Room Make Room, Harry Harrison, Hitler’s not even quoting Hitler, the conventional wisdom, 1860 – 1945, world tour, The Star Beast, a proto-fascist in an H.G. Wells sense, social credit, an evangelical tract, the educated class, material uplift, level cultures, administer world resource, very WASPy, very socialist, down in the trenches, the cultures are so different, anarchist bent, government can solve problems, Friday, a character invent a technology and not patent it, The Number Of The Beast, if it is a novel, 20 year window, a reasonable length of time, who owns the Statermeyer syndicate books now?, estates as liches, Dr Suess’ estate, Agatha Christie’s estate, Tolkien, how crappy the control, there’s competition to be faithful, there’s competition for art, the ones from the official estate, riddled with typos, cost $1500, get another stack, kickstart it, there are other juvenile science fiction novels, written some of them, the imitators, the competitors, the critical mass, year after year for twelve years, Dal Tigmar book, an Alan E. Nourse novel, first space voyage, alien buddy, its good, Heinlein wants you angry at him, how Heinlein doesn’t really have villains, the replacement captain, acting unwisely, shakes his hand, maybe you should go to school too, is this anyone’s favourite, most similar to Starman Jones, Finnish people in space, the breeding program, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Sisu, space gypsies, land monsters, centaurs or hippogriffs, move alongs, all the books are similar, a propaganda of the learning, the love of science, investigation, engineering, culture, overtly propagandistic, the math, reading the classics, Shakespeare, Heinlein’s imitators, autodidactic, the cultural canon, Hadrian’s Flight, The Wolf Of Venus, the broad base, the deep base, Mormon culture, Orson Scott Card, might be even stronger than Heinlein’s following, different eras, hit harder in the 1980s, new books comin out, the depth and the breadth, star rankings, compare books to each other, a competent writer, trying to build a book, squeeze out a really interesting book out of Farmer In The Sky, the conflict between the company and the colonists, can that book be greater than it is, probably the worst juveniles, the smallest idea, the twin paradox, school curricula, Have Spacesuit, very relatable idea, homeschooling parents, which one do I start my kids with?, Treasure Island, trial before the gods, a really interesting relationship with loving but distant parents, abusive parents, orphan, Tom turns into an abusive parent, Patricia, controlling abusive person, the book you give to an abusive home, Red Planet, a gun culture, an abusive school system, Star Beast, Between Planets, get rich quick scheme, controlling land, starving people out, real life stuff, space and on other planets, families, let’s do something about it, while listening to it, he’s the worst, most unpleasant, he’s not a bad boy, he’s weak and manipulative and self pitying, unsympathetic characters, this kid’s diaries, he’s a kid, he grows up by the end, what a little shit he is, he’s being a little self-pitying, the psychology of his brother, raging narcissist and a sociopath, precocious, the action is quite limited, the rescue of people, feels shorter, Rocket Ship Galileo, it’s plot is much butter, a Tom Swift book with Heinlein flavouring, more deft with what he was doing, very slick, I’m gonna stay, pulls the rug out, all your work was for nothing, that sometimes happens, Space Cadet, these huge initiation rites, just qualifying them for adulthood, the first chapter of the next journey, facing the bully, give up his dog, the transition out of juveniles, more of this too, I’m a real girl now, I’m gonna have a baby, space hooker makes good, Mata Hari, more manipulated, more annoyed, The Puppet Master, your sister who’s not you sister, don’t look at her with your penis out, cool book man, let’s have so more arguments sir, it isn’t Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing, he likes to piss his audience off, on multiple levels, the top level argument, an element of satire, when you reread some of those scenes, isn’t that the power of being a smart reader, now can dismiss them, first contact, my ability to fight back, the checkboxes, always in there, transgenderism, he goes to the ship’s psychologist, just thing of me as Doctor Whateverhernameis, with his pets, the subject of the book, the secret of the book, we’re all stuck in our own heads as well, the problem of solipsism, self satire in “All You Zombies”, the only thing that happens is the story, more humorous, a really smart guy, a Philip K. Dick story Foster, You’re Dead, you nailed, by just talking about it, most of his short stories are solid, several of his novels are crap, the rest are interesting, the latest bomb shelter, subscribe to the new bomb shelter, during the COVID thing, maybe I can stay in the school bomb shelter, the fear of a child, nailing something very specific, Tony And The Beetles, the relationship of India to Britain during the time Gandhi, you’re my friend!, reading the newspaper 1944, bonus points, free writing materials, the Japs, victory gardens, The Man In The High Castle, the Japanese could invade at any time, that’s how you get that powerful amazing stuff, judge it based on what it is, a pastiche of Kim, some Conan like scenes in it, Citizen Of The Galaxy, a story about slavery, he discovers he’s a slave at every level, opts for the slavery, why are time travel stories so full of incest, a Robert Silverberg incest time travel novel, there better that way, Chekhov’s Gun, a thematic purpose, your inhabiting your own heritage, connecting with that bodily, good writing, everybody loves Back To The Future (1985), Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), the avuncular mad scientist, Marty McFly and Doc Brown, the reader, the viewpoint for this exciting idea, surrogate father, saving his own father, even more necessary than a present father, uncles being there, a series of surrogate uncles, mentors, Tremors (1990), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), he’s his own grandpa, Edward Page Mitchell, The New York Sun, time travel, the invisible man, faster than light travel, a cyborg story, a robot with human skin, a Star Trek style transporter, The Balloon Tree, contact with a god, The Soul Spectroscope, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, The Senator’s Daughter, cryonics, veganism before vegans were invented, they’re gonna take pills, a war with China, all comedy, humorous, The Clock That Went Backwards, cars haven’t been invented yet, knickerbocker roots, a clone of their aunt, the Tardis Doctor from Doctor Who, 1 page of the newspaper, Weird Tales, a good science fiction story doesn’t have to have knowledge of Heinlein, a really good mind behind the linotype, documentary, this is behind almost everything, kitchen sized typewriters, Predestination (2014), The Door Into Summer (2021), an extra step to the loop, I missed you terribly, it brings out the fundamental tension, individualism vs. duty to society, isolated from himself, it’s hard to make novels into good movies, Project Hail Mary (2026), when an author does a good joke, Grace is the only one left, the reason you read poetry, triples the meaning, $45, a dragon on the cover, does it really need to be that big?, the Dune books, book 4 is the best of the series, the first 6, potboilers, The White Plague, Hellstrom’s Hive, The Jesus Incident, poetry, all the stuff that Campbell likes, telepathy shit, The Demolished Man, Alf Bester, the Psi Corp, Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith, Dimension X, X-Minus One, Clifford D. Simak, Shawn Standfast, Shakespeare’s Planet, late Simak novels, Wizard Of Oz style narrative, put them on the road, see where it goes, Ring Around The Sun, free houses and free cars, The Fisherman, three different ways, small town newspaper, he has to write it, what’s really going on in this company, what is the effect of the Vietnam War when a whole bunch of people go away, he doesn’t really do villains, mobs exist, witch-hunts, a part of human nature but we can all live together, the mid-west, Simak’s books get better, he feels more free, all good, all slightly different, a robot, a girl, what it means, a wizard of Oz for adults, men who’ve lost there wives, university professors who’ve had to grade students, crowdfunding, his later books, kinda weird, a crowdfunding goal, studying late period, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, The Number Of The Beast, rewriting The Divine Comedy, the last chapter of each book, facing down the devil (Robert Heinlein), anagrams of Robert Heinlein, a description of heaven, describing Tertius, the Enochian books, a whole bunch of layers open up, Heil aka Successful Operation, Assignment In Eternity, as by Lyle Monroe, Ray Bradbury’s not paying anybody, he wrote short stories, The Man Who Travelled In Elephants, parts of Tenderfoot In Space, Satellite Scout, Nothing Every Happens On The Moon, a diligent renewer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Draco’s Tavern, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Lord Dunsany, not actually a good novelist, I’m old now I’ll take the money, medical bills, a financial scramble, apparently Silverberg did really good and nobody knows how, how dare you, he’s indispensable, a few clunkers, doing things nobody else can do, profoundly impactful, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, cleanup when you have a picnic, be charitable, hearth and home, let’s pretend to be the Black Hand, the time of coming into your masculinity, the heroism of the individual, inspired and changed the world, a few of his non-juveniles are profoundly impactful, the wealthiest man in the world, D.D. Harriman, Musk in his rockets, he hasn’t been up in one, the other rocket boys, influencers, he read a book when he was kid, he ain’t faking that part, how genius works, the general aspects of intelligence, cognitive psychology, the higher levels, the flavour, he has hobbies and interests that aren’t just cash, sleeping on a cot for three months, the accumulation of money, making cool shit, sideways imported, Dan Davis, Ted Chiang’s Understand, feted vs fetid, William Gibson, author voice, a very flat dry voice, even more easily parodiable, John Steakly, he likes the sound and the feel of the word in his mouth, Neil Gaiman, a big ponderous book, Douglas Adams, an amazing short story writer, Seeing Ear Theatre, giving people what they want, short story and fairy tale tradition, mostly what he does, he redoes it and does it nicely, Charly (1968), Flowers For Algernon, you keep combing it, how do you write somebody smarter than you, Brainwave by Poul Anderson, they understand words and concepts, a dutch shepherd, they’re real smart, elephants, ponderous, it’s built into them, mountaintop hideaway, naked in shoes with a gun, an appendage to humanity, what we’ve been doing with herds, co-evolved symbiotes, cats, the feed store cat, they know their business, they assign themselves jobs, humans are boss here, local crows work with the local eagles, scares the crows off the property, a whole ecosystem, 200 times in the last two years, he’s always got a pet, a cat guy, a comedy of manners, Oscar Wilde, Pixel, Schrodinger’s Cat, an embodiment of quantum uncertainty, a really good cover, Robert Vaughn, Tom Weiner, McDonald’s is an Irish restaurant that serves German food, what have the google brothers done for us lately?, investing in life extension, space travel companies, spacesuits and life support systems, expose of the early 2000s tech culture, institutions vs. individuals, the wives, philanthropy arms, got snowed, the NGOs, the global censorship complex, feel very betrayed about it, sorry about that, it rhymes with the westcoast, 10am pacific, Skype, they lost so much money on it, a blight on humanity, satellite internet, except Skype, long distance, that company collapsed, a technological or engineering thing, some Russians, some Iranians, total light pollution, monopoly locally, he literally teaches you stuff, this is the book that got me into physics, he did it twice, the hyperspace, necessary for the McGuffin of the book, it’s his gimmie, one big gimmie, what’s the plot of Ringworld?, the theme is sex, sex comedies, a very funny guy, the main character is Niven, J.C., The Day The Earth Stood Still, J. Michael Straczynski, healed by Lorien, Harlan Ellison’s contribution, he had a vision, the 1989 strike line, Walter Koenig, kept him motivated, financial problems, A View From The Gallery, their lower decks episode, Peter David, Londo’s wives, one of the best villains ever on television, a tragic hero, nobody actors given Shakeperean roles, Lady Galadriel, he’s a lizard man, the story was done so well, if you just take the audio from episodes of Babylon 5, you don’t need the special effects, his first sales, Alien Worlds, his politics and his attitudes, the media he’s in, very independently minded, brittle personalities, Jeremiah, a lot of shitty stupid people who get in the way of shit, written by the same guy, interested in the same things, likeable male protagonist alone by himself, the great secret, in love with good stories, Lin Carter is not a good writer except when he’s writing about things that he loves, this Robert E. Howard really knows what he’s doing, David G. Hartwell, resentment is poison you take to kill someone else, call balls and strikes, it winnows away the problems and attracts other stuff, mediocre or worse, a joy when you find good stuff, good stuff that you don’t like, tried to like anime, it’s the writing that sucks not the drawing, how many good comic book writers, no new Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, Charlton horror comics, rip off good stuff, we made it happen.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #550

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Chasm by Bryce Walton

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Chasm was first published in IF, December 1956

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The SFFaudio Podcast #904 – The Grisly Horror aka Moon Of Zambebwei by Robert E. Howard (1 hour 6 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse AND Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
Zimbebwei, tells you nothing, spelled differently, a really place, making shit up?, a modern country, historical connection, tweaking it a little bit, seen most of it before, Bristol McGrath, El Borak with the serial, Richard Ballville, Dick Balls, English and Irish, American mutt, Constance Brand, Ethan Brand, De Alba, the quadroon, the fake arab, part african, so much backstory, each chapter is a couple of pages, mastered this knifestroke, hairy hillman, fewer than a dozen men, afghan knife, ran off to Africa, speaks perfect arabic, of course you recognize this symbol, living in a western city, California?, drowned his sorrows, heard the scream one time, Louisiana?, Pine Woods, Pigeons In The Dark, Black Cannan, The Valley Of The Spiders?, in Mongolia, a racial transformation, an white man becomes a very specific mongol, mentality and bodily transforming into Genghis Khan, doesn’t everybody like the white ladies, gorilla gods, a silver and grey gorilla from Africa, Congo, a throwback to when earth was experimenting, poor Thak, Zemba, every gorilla, calling a lion simba, just another zemba, why did any of this happen?, a secret prison, a secret combination lock, I didn’t want to use the whip on her, what a crazy story, how these things get constructed, Robert E. Howard cosplaying as a pirate, a series of scenes where he’s walking through the woods, a dead body, conked or drugs, tricks him twice, pulls his punches, of course I saw it coming, he got me anyway, the drugged whiskey, a series of scenes, a dead guy, a tortured guy, a dying guy, he’s doing it for money, stringing it for longer, might get me in the cover, the description, daughter in the car, read all of Conan, after he gets conked out in the cave, was that Robert E. Howard?, you can tell, three ladies in brass bras and two dudes in turbans, web of living death, almost everybody’s naked, just the headdress, naked in front of the gorilla god, parrot feathers and gorilla overcoats, super descriptive, vibe based descriptions, he doesn’t have to worry about any of the actual details, his fight scenes, it never works, this impression of what is supposed to be happening, into detail, the choke-out scene, he says the magic words, the red mist goes away, then he gets tricked again, awesomely cool, the mary sue for Howard, needs him to keep getting in trouble, an adaptation, set in Turan, their version of Iran, a swamp, the monkey men and the monkey god, gold monkey, falls into a swamp pit, implied, the ancient indians, who knows why, secret indian road megaliths, [Shadows In The Moonlight aka Iron Shadows In The Moon], recycling the same plots, the motive behind, the back catalogue of this podcast, from the guy’s wife, I’m gonna go marry your wife now, an inversion, there aren’t that many plots, friend/rival, girl love-triangle, backstory, krise, short academic paper on afghan knives, a guy who looks like The Shadow, a pesh-kabz, a cool looking knife, a long ape-like arm, focused not on the nudity but the violence, the inhuman rival and the human rival, what makes a man a man and not a monkey, a super-early story, The Last White Man, so ridiculous, earlier than Spear And Fang, things that freak people out, quadroons and niggers, the most racist period under Wilson, reforms after the Civil War, a little less racialized, coming out of that, he’s smart, working out the ideas in fiction, why everything’s so weird, civilization vs. barbarism, doesn’t fit in this, an autarch, let everything fall to ruin, ruined disaster falling apart around his ears, foreign, grew up in an arab household, becomes a wizard, I’m gonna be one of your priests now, stretchin it a bit there, another boxing story, Sailor Steve Costigan, those are good too, he’s playing to a different kind of strength, a boxer himself, writing for fight stories, an exhibitionism, an argument to be made, padded gloves, wrap your fists, a lot less violence, schoolyard and afterschool violence, cyberbulling, physical damage is avoidable (unless doing it to yourself), the writing is vivid no matter what he’s writing, his use of colour, voodoo, this isn’t voodoo, a comparatively young relgion, granite cliffs, a mewling infant, uncounted ages, it is poetry, they never say I love his poetry, he loved his poetry, those poems are written for him, poetry wasn’t just something you do in a final exam, a real piece of culture, the biblical Cain, tell the story from Cain’s point of view, amazing descriptions, what never gets tiresome is his description, an amazing spell he puts on you, that rhythm to it, that it is written by Robert E. Howard, that spark and depth of beauty, pick any random line, strange alien garb, turkish slippers, distinctly oriental, holding up a gun, sit at his feet and listen to the dialogue flow, pulls out the telegram, such a great mechanic, internal flashback, so good, he’s really good at what he does, scores left to kill you and her, wandered far, grew to manhood, the white blood in me, a mirror of our hero, whole novels about their backstories, the road is full of stumps and new growth, degenerated and morally degenerated, the Cthulhu cult in The Call Of Cthulhu, the white tree, over ranging the earth, similar to The Black Stone, more of this please, the love of poetry and demand for money, he clearly loved writing, workaday writing, he had to love these stories, he is having a lot of fun with these, for the photograph, stringing it together with plot, a storyteller’s mind, poetic language, such a rare combination, Roy Thomas changed it so much, no reason to change it, how many snake stories, The Scarlet Citadel, famous big snake, a Stygian snake, spiders, that’s not an afghan knife, mini-brass bra, proper colour, no pistol, he shoots him down, half-dead, 44, drugs, somehow imported all this to the United States, met in Vienna once, how are you in Vienna, took over all the blacks in town, weird voodoo, dumb plan, showed up with a killer monkey and a cult, the girl gets drugged, a sleepwalker, she was naked, walked like a robot, mechanically, the horror that squatted in the center of the glade, to be the gorilla’s god’s wife, the “bride”, Facts In The Case Of Arthur Jermyn And His Family, his grandmother in the box, she was half monkey, eat her?, rape her?, do miscegenation with her?, a girl in danger, mean things to her, the guy who faked her death earlier, these guys are all Robert E. Howard, two degenerate guys from landed estates after the Civil War, goes off to Africa to explore, Afghanistan to explore, Los Angeles to explore, the adventurer’s club, mount an expedition to the top of this volcano, dinosaurs or King Solomon’s Mines, never from the establishment’s point of view, roughneck, wealth is dissipated, hired by a professor or a wizard, that’s not how we act, right beside Brown, a letter to the local paper disputing an astrologer, how astronomy works, he had a regular column writing about astronomical matters, August is my preferred month, it passes through Virgo!, he’s thinking about that, astronomical matters, so good, the snippy people, People Of The Black Coast and Stragella, Hugh B. Cave, very popular at the time, outside of our weird pulp obsessed circle, alive a lot longer, people interested in reading books, you should definitely read Hugh B. Cave, 1910 to 2004, either of the Howards, issue of Weird Tales, an E. Phillips Oppenheim story, He by H.P. Lovecraft, the magazine is not as shitty in 1926, Ooze, the first cover story, Lovecraft writes a bunch of letters to Weird Tales, this is my aesthetic, very priggish, that’s when he got married, offered him [an] editorship, move to Chicago, handled being an editor, people on other podcasts, Clark Ashton Smith, Farnsworth Wright rejected the story, overwhelmed with stuff, fit certain lengths, editing is not a small job, resubmit the same story with minor changes, come at me right now I’m busy, fill certain slots, two page stories, poems, Weirdisms, a magazine is not a variable length, a certain exact length, “the signature”, each set of folds, this many exact sheets of paper, on a blog or a podcast it doesn’t matter, more key to understanding why something gets picked up, I have this budget too, this story is not ten times better than other rejected, better than Almuric, clearly someone considered it good, gorilla, cult, secret indian hideaway, drugged brandy, I got the gorilla to North America but I’m not going to tell you how, gorilla costumes past customs, a sacred totem of a murder cult, the blacks in the United States, American blacks converted to this religion, reverse colonialism, okay I’m writing a gorilla story, weird gorilla cult, off the rails, absolutely audacious, won’t say no to a challenge, gorillas are in this month (in fact every month), and another John Lange/Michael Crichton, only 4 and a half hours, legit or not.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #549

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Bad Company by Walter de la Mare

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Bad Company was first published in The Listener, April 1, 1954

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
1938/39, first fiction, before Lifeline, highschool, Robert E. Howard’s juvenalia, 14 years old, terrible and awesome, natural writers, those who don’t force it, self-confession, the natural writers, tipping their hand all the time, Robert E. Howard later on, stupider and funnier, who is this kid, he sounds like Dan Sawyer, fine a writer they like, read more of that, Heinlein’s most popular juvenile, Have Space Suit Will Travel, a capstone, an epitome of the whole series, Farmer In The Sky, an excellent novel, Time For The Stars, the central characters are so horrible, horrible people, 30 years ago, Between Planets, a little bit like Podkayne Of Mars, count it as, the same literary form, the same basic structure, Starship Troopers, a transitional book, suit the new market, to break the contract, walk it across the street, literary genre is more philosophical dialogue, later books, his preferred form is the philosophical dialogue, main weakness, surprised a couple of times, predict every scene, fresh details, 23 years ago, getting old, lear a few things between books, having known when Heinlein was alive and reading, Heinlein-like novels, Annette Kurtis Clause, a cat a girl and a spaceship, she liked Heinlein, The Unincorporated Man, the sequels, The Unincorporated Woman?, triple or double the length, the premise, a really interesting premise, 2008, technically possible that they read this, who isn’t?, alot of podcast, insights, supergenius, transgenderism is always hidden, why is he like this, why?, the same reason, Stranger In A Strange Land, Starship Troopers, as a book, so much shorter, a good length, at least twelve, maybe seventeen, more plot, less rawness, everyone’s main problem with Heinlein, Perry, The Last Days Of Socrates, the strawmen there, well dressed strawmen, more distance, self-satisfied, echo, do a show by myself, Heinlein is too fuckin smart, it makes him isolated, smart at the typewriter, the result of his arguments with other very smart people, Sturgeon, Goddard, Asimov, Jack Parsons, resentful and hectoring, a background, Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the occult background, a Thelemite, the rocket guy, figuring out how to make rocketry work, Scientology, gnosticism, a weird direction, through his second wife, the Philip K. Dick story, a foot in that world, a rationalist, not a materialist, all of these worlds, a grand synethsis, modernity had broken culture, Sixth Column, just right after WWII?, the one book he says he regrets, a short story that John Campbell, racism, yellow peril is awesome, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, The Number Of The Beast is a grimoire, one thing on top, a whole other thing going on underneath, how to write, in the guise of a really bad novel, The Pursuit Of The Pankera, an adventure story, a nostalgic revisit of The Puppet Masters, a throwback, really readable, a seperate book, rights clearances, that’s crazy, he was dying when he wrote it, license fees, LibriVox, Heinlein, Furure Fantasia, first science fiction somethings, technically his first fiction, this had never been seen before, the guy who tracked it down, lost, naval academy buddy, Leon Stover, sitting the Heinlein archives in four different peices, more from good writers, new Michael Crichton novel, wasn’t published during his lifetime, raw, scraps of notes, James Patterson, a collab with, Vesuvius, Eruption, based on something, the real guy, somebody vibing with Heinlein, the best hoax ever, everything is in there too, nudity, the transgenderism, more and more later, whatever kink thing, Socrates, The Symposium, as a digression, Margaret St. Clair, a few novels, her shor stories, Weird Tales, wrote up into the 60s at least, she was a witch, weird stuff, in the same region, his letters, regress yourself to an ancient roman, weird stuff explainable by the weird personalities, what this book is, News From Nowhere, by William Morris, a utopian novel, William Guest, the socialist league, very Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, an epoch of rest, the economics, philosophy, no authority, no marriage or divorce, people find pleasure in nature, pleasure in their work, engenders between people, socialism will entail, art life and work, there is a plot, guy has a car crash wakes up, fur coat, nude underneath, a future society, diagonsed as being a guy, punches her old boyfriend, sent for therapy, san fransisco for a minute, a rehab center, tour a rocket factory, winds up in a threesome, much longer stranger, circumnavigating the moon trip, doing Requiem before Requiem, Heinlein got his wish, Door Into Summer, Beyond The Horizon, something from Star Beast, the seeds for everything, mining this book, The Roads Must Roll, the premise for the tech, no strike, the rolling sidewalks are called the ways, Door Into Summer, the rolling roads are in The Door Into Summer, a little bit of Friday in there, so useful, so hepful, Costco, first 10 books for 20 bucks, 2 volumes of Heinlein juveniles in a slipcase, kids interested in reading, how good Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen, more of the same everytime, different everytime, get kids into reading, when you’re a kid you have to have something in hand, nothing to hand neices and nephews, wish-fulfilment bullshit, he does Tom Swift, quanit and handy, making sandwiches, missing wills, nosy neighbours, not for boys, confident in your manhood, Starman Jones, the most non-memorable book of the whole series and its awesome, orphans, orphan mentality, a stepmom and a new stepdad, homeless bum, very 1930s very 2026y book, guilds, the system is rigged against us, cheating your way into success and meaning is helpful, keeping your soul, how Heinlein got into the naval academy, state senator, went and camped out, impressed or annoyed him to death, a lot of competition, the scions of wealthy houses, a poor kid from the ozarks, look at old magazines, from 1912 up to the 1930s, all the rich people magazines are putting your kid into summer school or military school, Robert W. Chambers, Hastur, The King In Yellow, The Repairer Of Reputations, America’s imperial future, feels like the 2020s, suicide booths, Aleistair Croley and William Morris, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, very tounge in cheek, Idiocracy, the same idea, the movie version, an army experiment, a future that’s different, that formula with Looking Backward, The Sleeper Wakes, The Door Into Summer, Rip Van Winkle, not a science fiction story, how funny America is, my how things are changed, everybody’s Heinlein, sitting around the pool, the beautiful naked lady, the slightly fatter naked lady, Jubal Harshaw, his physique, a different experience reading Stranger now, a lot more about the personalities, who all these people are, roman a’clef, an afterword, a special edition, kickstarter backers, general release, Glory Road, adult juveniles, a distinct literary form vs. a target audience, to tell an adult story, drank from the well and I was full, water brother, grokked it well, quite an experience, a scene right in the middle of the book, Rodin’s sculpture of the caryatids, about that scene in the center, the sculpure gallery, the decoder ring for the whole thing, audiobook, moved out into the wilderness, recording studio, August, recording a lot, writing Secrets Of The Heinlein Epic, the juveniles and a few others, distinct in literary history, publicity, keep reading Heinlein’s later works, obviously garbage, derrangement syndrome, Our Opinions Are Correct, this is incoherent, you’re mad at someone who’s dead, mentally model people, there isn’t a little homunculus in your head, that scene from Men In Black, a whole starship full of forces and actors and dicipline, constantly being overriden, explaining their weird behavior, a very diciplined crew, undisciplined crews, driving off the road and getting divorces, what have you, the art of agency, sort your drives out and point them in the same direction, Marvin Minsky, I read every Heinlein, “other better writers”, want to say newer authors, John Scalzi, we don’t need book 2, book 4, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, you can’t have Orson Scott Card, plays nice, using his blog to promote their books, forbidden, I read Heinlein, I sold all my Heinlein, for Lovecraft, turning over in his graves, fact masquerading as taste, a disservice to everybody invovled, an echo chamber sort of thing, he is his own best echo chamber, at his worst, I Will Fear No Evil, a super-cool book, in terms of literary value, how Heinlein worked as a person and author, Ginny had to pay the hospital bills, Lurton Blassinggame, shortened it, augmented it or retooled it, some really interesting ideas, similar to this book in a way, easy to miss, finding out, newspaper reports of how he died, a fun little scene, still newspapers and stuff, doing great for 1939, the internet from Friday, human invovled search engines, ai tokens, the woman at the beach, her name was Diana, this is all a dream of the guying on the beach, Glory Road, psychotic break, a unique quality of its own, all of them start with death, in most of his books after Stranger, a repeating pattern, a very interesting road, Heinlein was big into reading ancient mythology, an ancient afterlife myth, another aspect of this book, mention a lot, had this been published in 1940 or 1939, a huge hit or immediately dismissed, Ayn Rand, the same thought, she gets way too much fuckin attention in the 20th century, The Fountainhead, a very robotic book, Anthem, they’re not humans, they’re robotoids, mythological abstractions, sadder, university, very excited about college and university, economics, micro and macro, the ideas more interestin than the calculations, of course he’s right, he does another thing he’s really good at, Farmer In the Sky, food, breakfast, strawberries, flapjacks, the long list of enjoyable food, the sensous pleasure, if this was 1939, a Murad!, not a lot of penetration, milk glands, the female form, a nudsit, another Margaret St. Clair connection, a sacramental aspect, occultism, the gnostic and hermetic went their seperate ways, anti-body, hateful of the natural world, Sam Altman, destroy humanity and replace it with the machine god, underlying Marxism, very body embracing, the physical body as the contact point between the temporal and eternal universe, of that tradition, anarcho primitivists, a good cup a coffee, pet a dog, be chased by a goose, his analyis, description of the game, a “master”, the alternate rules at the end, something homeschoolers should be doing, the history of the 20th century would be different, a bold claim, people are highly motivated by ideas, the whole 20th century is explainable, incredibly popular with dentists, the New Deal, look at the economics, projected into the future past us, he predicted UBI, Wisconsin a fair amount, this is not a novel in the normal sense, an educational tract disguised as a novel, the Vril book, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwyer Lytton, triumph of the human spirit, big lady positive, power rods, symbolic, the bullion called Bovril, it was huge, pre-WWI Germany, huge popularity, we are becoming, lay a lot of the histy of the world at the feet of Marx and Engels, the end of the draft, the Moon mission, the draft was ended by Milton Friedman, hilarious and crazy, a friend born in 1946, my favourite billionaire likes rockets, he’s interested in things I’m interested in, he’s interested in satellites, sending my girlfriend, D.D. Harriman, Space X, the books are incredibly powerful, people model their lives on characters in books and television, a citation for that, even the stupidest people, Paul Krugmann, wanted to be the foundation character, Hari Seldon, Peter Turchin, fail upward, they didn’t read the book, they read the ai summary of the book, Al Qaeda, a parallel evolution, a big science fan, 100191, numeralogy arguments, the romans not having arabic numerals, not having punctuation, internal signaling, the USS Cole, personal experience, a learn to read book, 1840 version of Chicken Little, a leaf falls on her tail, runs to tell her mother, out let us run, Duck Luck, Fox Lox, in to my den where we will be safe, the end of the world story, Paradise, 2012 (2009), Roland Emmerich, a really funny comedy, it’s a comedy!, it’s very funny, When Worlds Collide, a retelling of Noah’s ark and the rebirth of the world, all the ladies, we’ll be safe from the falling of the sky, ate em all up, end of story, a very valuable and resonant story, are you the fox?, seeing it with my ears, questioning my senses, what if you’re wrong, when gets things a little bit too pay, cringe, a refrain in the book, his assembly campaign, reading through it, stops and has the exponents of the great future, it serves our needs, it’s not the perfect system, when Lazarus Long gets involved, history doesn’t have an end state, a remarkable individual, George O. Smith novel, Hellflower, scanned it up, find the magazine art, Virgil Finlay, analogy for poppies or heroin, the drug running sort of stuff, “indespensible”, “other better writers have taken up Heinlein’s torch”, writers who are less important to read, for your self, it’s super fucking interesting and compelling, don’t worry about spoilers, how it explores the ideas, there’s never been a book where he half-asses, goes in with both feet, he’s just a man, he didn’t agree with himself, a Wikipedia entry for BRIC shares, cleaning up shelves, what is this?, some sort of investment thing, they were trying to do what Heinlein’s trying to do, the words “social credit”, not the same as the chinese system, the fun part, the authors: Heinlein, Orwell, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Julian Huxley, The Tissue Culture King, a Wakanda story, a hidden african country, an african native doing some sort of obesicanece ritual, a tissue culture, he’s culturing tissue, they took the king, spreading him around, for mind control, a telepathy thing, a metal helmet, mind-controlled, 1911 area, republished in Amazing, simultaneously published, fuckn weird Guy, T.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells, strange fuckin interesting guy, way into nudity for my personal hanging around, put on a robe once in a while, bro, very big into hospitality, his relationship with Philip K. Dick, a defense of Heinelin, the funniest man ever, broken and hilarious, hitting on everybody, the two most different kind of guys, courtly and knightly, awkward and lusty and sweaty, the mad monk of science fiction, the most influential authors of the 20th century, top down vs. bottom up, literary technique, evolved, technically better writers, also into social credit, one foot in today and one foot out of time, hard to find in any writer, fully of the moment, the fashionable frame, an example, W.R. Bennett, W.A.C. Bennett, the socialist party, currently in power, they were running as “social credit” (socreds), in power in Alberta, they can’t do anything because they’re provinical, they can’t issue money, they eventually become a conservative party, what his dad did, 1871, a very different history, Kamchatka, last colonized, wild, a whole bunch of social construction, from a free enterprise party, those two parties are competing for the attention of British Columbian voters, that’s what Saudi Arabia has done, Saudi Arabia, Norway, taken the extra steps, how fuckedd things up with ai, human flourishing, if this book had been published in 1939, sunk and lost forever, really popular, politicians generally don’t know anything, socializing and getting promoted because of his midwit status, a foothold, defensible, an a b test, in this version of reality, coming late as it does, almost nobody reads at all, same time zone, we used to be neighbours, Vancouver Island, norther part of North America, the Philip K. Dick bay area, nude beach, Heinlein’s old house, cops enforcing nobody on the beach after sunset, they might hurt themselves, the stairs aren’t lit, bring a flashlight, we are run by idiots who didn’t read no fuckin books, British Columbia, west coast time, they decided to do away with daylight savings time, until California acted, they’re so fuckin dysfunctional, the newest, other than Alaska and Tasmania, not as fully corrupt the farther you go back, the more currupt it is, the corruption scandals in the birth of Canada, California was born corrupt, the corruption counterbalanced, we just want to be honest, craziness, 2nd premeier of British Columbia was Amour De Cosmos, tail end of the 19th century, doukhobourss, nudist pacificsts, the tsar’s military, beaten by the cops for being nudist pacificst, pederasts, aristoi, the elites, Socrates and Plato, shorty flatty, a wrestler, UFC guys, but gay sort of but not really, he’s got a wife, that traitor has a sexy body, send the girls out, women were inherited polluting, not out about it, bronze age pervert, a twitter person, a philosopher, a proper philosophy book, bulgarian, Claremont Institute, selective breeding, born in 1980, a weird combination of vitalism and ancient greek homo-eroticism and liberalism, stimulating, books look nice on the shelf, City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, gazebo, a book on chicken breeding, one of the William Hope Hodgson set, Bernarr McFadden, a magazine publisher and body builder, super against vaccines, naming his children with the letter b, faking his numbers, an invasion of the United States by the Japanese right after WWI, an under ground proto-nazi civilization, chemical fertilizer food, refused to surrender, just happens to speak German, a lot like this book but as a dystopia, a royalty breeding level, really weird, synthetic creation of fertilizer, synthetic petroleoum, drugs, different levels of the society, where the workers arent, hedonism and breeding all day, Stanley Kubrick, Brave New World, we’re there, the Fabians, Coventry, the reserve system, two more books, more walking around, If This Goes On, a naval aviator, ballistics guy, taking things apart and putting things together, not replaceable, fun and funny, another different thing, Down From Ten, Hadrian’s Flight, a podcast version, narrating things by other people, Suave Rob series, satire comedy series, surfs supernovas, short story collections, southern gothic horror, Time Of The Twins, Kyrnn, Time For The Stars, the girl one, Podkayne Of Mars, visit Heinlein, admire but don’t enjoy, horrible people, horribly broken people, an unpleasant read, night owl, west coast, easier to get up earlier, private tutor, professor obeisance to a lot of things, political parties, I like reading more than one author, a human religion, one of those ones, doctrinaire stuff, all models break down, enough power, pry the Heinlein estate out of their hands, literary agency, not being very aggressive, how many such cases, try and find a book of his on the shelf, Clifford D. Simak’s estate, way better than Clarke, a power in short stories, The Star, about a jesuit priest coming back from a solar system, the short stories were hard to find, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, The Nine Billion Names Of God, a classic of science fiction, Olaf Stapledon novels, translated into short stories, orbits and orbital mechanics, The Haunted Spacesuit, the ship’s cat is having kittens inside the spacesuit, he has power, Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, it’s very good, it’s very funny, very meta, John W. Campbell style editor, a bunch of ribbons, an alternate dimensions, a comedy, in the body of another person, a comedy of customs, a science fiction universe, science fiction is out and westerns are in, recycle other people’s stories, rocket people, beautiful ladies with brass bra bikinis, a cover of Startling Stories, supermeta, an excellent writer, inspired Lawrence Block, the last Burglar book, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, the writer’s writer, pal around with, admire his writing, see you on twitter, chicken pictures, birds and dogs, no pigs yet, dogs, gooses, turkeys, assholes, eating her pigs, couple geese, tons of chickens, cattle are way less work than chickens, beef, delicious, acreage, goats, straight to cattle, water is difficult, having water delivered, gazebo, the cloth walls come down, a tent cabin in Yosemite, negative 40, 70 or about 20, 32 is zero, grok it, 98 or 32, get those numbers wrong, the freezing point water, the wrong altitude, sea level, boiling point of seawater, now we have to be French about it, Ostreich, little bits of history, okay whatever, Austria’s greatest cultural achievement that Hitler was German and Beethoven was Austrian, the guy always comes from the periphery, Stalin’s from george, Lincoln’s from Illinois, encapsulates the hate, the real life Hari Seldon, grand unified theory, elite overproduction, he needed to be in this conversation in this book, counter elite, corrupt clique of the imperial corps, find a parade and march in front of it, the excellent discussion.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #548

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Death Beat by David C. Cooke

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Death Beat was first published in Manhunt, November 1956

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Jesse and Scott talk about Hellflower by George O. Smith

Talked about on today’s show:
George O. Smith, George H. Smith, style wise, Venus Equilateral series, 1942 – 1947, Startling Stories, 1952/1953, a little like something from the 70s, old fashioned, the other drugs that are in it, a misimpression from right early on, Farradyne came to the point, who do you want killed?, dumped the Semiramide into the bog, the Titanic, a book about drugs, on the lookout for drugs, rotgut, Venus, a mushroom farmer, the good stuff, White Star Trail?, the description, a godsend, the flavour of fine scotch whiskey, the pure quill, the stylized language, high test liquor, goes to a bar and orders it, synthehol, fake beer, rye whiskey, other drugs, some toxin, the name of his boat, his ship, a person, a historical person, what do you think of this book?, mixed feelings, alien race, Simak, infiltrate, a book about drugs, con-notate, drug touches, the central idea of the book, cynical, history, the SAND, a cut-out, gets his license back, a Lancaster-81, 1981? 2081?, 3 movies with the exact same plot, The Stranglers Of Bombay, Thugees, East India Company vs. the Thugees, a Hong Kong one, Christopher Lee, the British occupation of Hong Kong, Live And Let Die, Caribbean Island nation, opium pushing, tongs and thugees are the bad guys, pushing opium, spread the blame, the hellflower pushers, after a certain point, aliens and interstellar travel, workmanlike, beautiful flowers and science fiction, influenced by this?, All Flesh Is Grass, whenEric S. Rabkin says let’s do a show on food, bad theory, Virgil Finlay is so great at drawing flowers, excellent at it, let the man work at what he’s good at, a problem with the book, a problem with our perception, were men affected by hellflowers, not explicitly enough pushed, it’s not really stated, one way that this works, how this works, a good thing that he didn’t tell us, marijuana, cocaine, coffee, licorice, propaganda, so tasty, so delicious, you don’t give babies coffee generally (although in Costa Rica), nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, what is the effect of it if you’ve never had it, apologizing for the book, like it more than I should, space adventure stuff, ships in space, like Heinlein, zippin around, avoid the defenses of earth and the attacks from the aliens, cartoon miniseries, a lot of action, cool locations, at one point they land at the bottom of Lake Michigan, the submarine comes, a Han Solo without Chewbacca but with more Heinlein physics, a lot like Rocketship Galileo, ftl around the solar system, really cool, glued, fun, the truck drivers, tying people up, how the first Indiana Jones movie works, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, an airplane, a snake, lots of action, because it is awesome, a serial, it feels like a serial, out of Planet Stories, solar system based, several planets, Heinleinesque, spacers, run cargo around, that’s what our guy is, Mercury to Pluto, WWII bomber, overstuffed with aircraft, Brazil please buy an aircraft carrier, conned Canada into buying two aircraft carriers, all the WWII pilots, skills that nobody needed, cargo aircraft for cheap, [DC-3s], ex-military cargo aircraft, quite liked that feel, I like science fiction, reputation is damaged, a womanizer, somewhat aliens, related to humans somehow, Star Trek shapeshifters, human emotions, why they don’t all look like Hortas, recessive voice thing, his first clue, dashed off, it’s good, enjoy science fiction and then have favourites, a dose of things we’ve been missing, four gravities, she can’t stand up, the goodreads reviews, the politics of the gender stuff, strong reactions?, two main women, the hellflower addict who rejects him, the sister of the guy who died, blackmailing him, Carolyn, a strong woman a part of a crime family on Mercury, not a human crime family, crack cocaine, the evil cartels, infiltrate the evil cartels, setup a guy to infiltrate it, you can’t infiltrate, more operators, betraying his own people, in retrospect, so nice, speculates, what could motivate a person, he doesn’t dwell on the horrors philosophically, is it okay to push drugs, not cool, he thinks about that a bit, the dynamics, Carolyn had a flower in her hair, threw it in the trash, he wanted her to be sober, I prefer sobriety, feelings created by this chemical, 20th and 21st century society, Spanish Fly, mythical stuff, date rape drugs, Fat Albert, Bill Cosby, a drug that makes women want to have sex with you, so they can’t defend themselves, an effect that cigarettes have on people, bring you closer, alcohol, lowers inhibitions, an ex-smoker, conventions, the people who are out there, artists out there, deeper conversations, the most important part of it, coffee has replaced that, let’s go have coffee, tea or matcha, it’s basically candy at this point, the whole point of the phrase, let’s spend time together, cigarettes is a need, two different levels, the addiction to cigarettes, we see it in movies, hey sailor got a light, smoke in the classroom, when it is illicit, you’re out there to smoke, you ask them for a light, the social introduction, Victorian style dramas, introduced, where’s your calling card, introduced to society, we only are mutually introduced, your way of self-introducing, all social-strata, a keen observer, a light in their own pocket, they are need of human to human interaction, marijuana, social, smoking pot alone, used to be very very social, you share it, you pass the joint around, drinking alone, out with folks, think about drugs all the time, what’s it purpose, it’s to get the people addicted to keep them down, cannabis keeps people from rebelling, heroin, hooked on that, a bunch of purposes, opiates are used in medicine all day long, people don’t like pain, mental pain, bad news on the telephone, alcohol jar, a smoke, externalizing the internal when it is performative like that, a real phenomena within the human being, in folktales nobody every says I love you they just give you food, the silly premise, sexually irrepressed, the wacky tacbbacy, the same for opium, an invasion, the East India pushing opium into China, extract from China, cartoonish in this book, take over the human solar sytem, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Dutch East India Company, replace Americans with Japanese, lebensraum, ethnically cleanse the area, the book doesn’t quite work on that level of a historical analogy, an action adventure, those James Bond movies, how silly they are, he was talking about real people, Doctor No, a throwback to Fu Manchu, a Yellow Peril, the Fu-Manchu books, how drugs influence people, the appreciation of beauty, coming in from economic warfare, the flower connection, fields of purple flowers, The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr., the editorial introduction, May 1952 publication, SPACE OPERA, science fiction at it’s best, science fiction’s greatest asset, space and time and immensity, it’s the ideas, space doesn’t have to be in it, time and immensity, the immensity of the solar system, the immensity of the galaxy, transitioned to another solar system, looking out the bubble, the different constellations, that’s really good stuff, real, stuff happening, the most colour and movement, subplot, purely cerebral story, a thing of beauty and joy forever, no blonde priestesses, he’s selling this book to us, paying my ten cents, looking down my nose at spaceopera, what’s being written today, stuff happening, science fiction is the setting in which stuff happens, the rightful queen, the unrightful queen, favourite stuff, Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, Hyperion, Dune, another drug book, is this a stuff happening book?, a little more than that, well-paced, this book is better than it appears to be, the dedication, one of Campbell’s ex-wives, may that’s his wife, used to be Campbell’s wife, fun to find someone new, my god the sparks!, I just can’t believe how sparky this is, Simak without as much poetry, without as much meditation, philosophical thinking, a collection of stories, The Worlds Of George O., Highways In Hiding.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #547

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Big Cheese by Edward Wellen

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Big Cheese was first published in Imagination, May 1953

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The SFFaudio Podcast #901 – Hellflower by George O. Smith, read by Ben Tucker.

Hellflower was first published in Startling Stories, May 1952.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (6 hours 13 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #546

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Curious Pleasure Excursion by Mark Twain

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

A Curious Pleasure Excursion was first published in The New York Herald, July 6, 1874, page 10

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Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
read all the Crichtons, middle school, volunteered at a library, everything else available, the John Langes, paperbacks, the 10th Michael Crichtons, theoretically a John Lange novel, a Murder In Hollywood, the pirate sites, don’t trust the estates, a better writer, Timeline is mid-1990s, several revelations, hey mom, how you doin?, science, biology, animals, a bad choice, doctors don’t actually have good jobs, mechanics (essentially), a human being, you can’t just buy a new car, how doctors are, horrible people if they think their magic powers are useful, patients vs. objects to be experimented on, genetics, amphibians, snakes, turtles, parrots, he wrote a screenplay, Westworld, they’re all the same subject: theme parks, the evil master plan, the whole purpose of it was for a theme park, the company is gonna make a theme park, exploit this stuff, telling some investors, a little vague, not as good a book, this new technology is going to change the world, genetics, make nuclear look like nothing, the quantum realm, a good movie, not to fanboy over the most popular thing, The Andromeda Strain, mainstream books, Michael Crichton doesn’t come out of the science fiction ghetto, technothriller, weird science fiction guys, don’t worry, Margaret Atwood, marketing purposes, fight against that, he didn’t read Astounding, Larry Niven, the classics, a parallel evolution, born in the 1940s, 50s and 60s wise, he tells us, he loved Conan Doyle, The Lost World, kinda pulpy, Ian Malcolm as his Sherlock Holmes, he comes back, they thought I was dead for a while, his only sequel, The Terminal Man is his Frankenstein, the story of the guy who had a tin-foil, literally gave him foil, insane asylum, turned it into a thriller, The Andromeda Strain is The War Of The Worlds, in an interview somewhere, a neat twist, an inversion, a baby and a sterno drinker, Congo we could argue that it’s King Solomon’s Mines, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, getting all the classics, an Ian Fleming one, a James Bond one, doing his best to tip his hand, a lost nuke story, Thunderball, Grave Descend, really good, get crackin on these things, pirate books, parallel evolution, axes to grind, the theme parking of reality, what tattoo it was, Robert Picardo, emergency medical hologram on some lady’s arm, liked Star Trek Voyager, the worst of the best ones, pathetic and sad, Disney adults, bought out, Larry Ellison’s son, the phrase is the important part, they have rides and stuff, maybe Universal Studios, aging out of it, a whole Stars Wars theme park, a class of Star Wars adults, a new Punisher special, Marvel adults, some patheticness in our society now, a lot more in Westworld, Westworld is a great novel, the mystery box problem, such a thing, horrible writing, one of the things that killed the new Lord Of The Rings show, J.J. Abrams, just tell the story, a weird artificial mystery, writing the novel chapter by chapter, no idea where the story is going, cohesive idea, a lot of speeches in this book, the Jeff Goldblum performance, Michael Crichton’s voice, he’s smart, had to compare the movie to the book, what the book was doing, might as well do it now, almost a perfect movie, in relief to the book, the ideas in the book, the differences between them, Hammond is the bad guy in the book, the same kind of bad guy as we see in Timeline, obsessed assholish ceo, an explicit liar, the flea circus, dream of entertaining children, he brought the kids for a specific purpose, approval more likely, “spared no expense”, sitting at the end with the ice cream, his death in the book is transfered to the death to the bad guy from Seinfeld, Nedry, who the traitor is, intro scene on the beach, all the terrible personality traits, the villain of the movie vs. the villain of the book, motivation, Drug Of Choice, a book, a phrase, during covid, injections, not ivermectin, not hydroxychloroquine, buy my own island, the trigger for everything goes wrong, eaten, in the sequel movie, nibbled to death, Peter Stormier, stuck in a bunch of other movies, the family on the beach, Jurassic World, parents getting divorced, the aviary dorm, the movie follows closely, Eric S. Rabkin, had a hand in the script, a Hollywood movie director, enough juice, a Spielberg movie, how to make money, to be filmed, wanted to make a movie with Sean Connery, the opening of Timeline and the opening of this are quite similar, a road trip, Mexico and Costa Rica, a huge glaring flaw, Costa Rica doesn’t have an army, a civilian military, Hammond and Muldoon, heavy armament, rocket launchers, SPAS-12, tase the dinosaurs or rocket launcher, a solid 50 caliber, Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, this is a trope in science fiction magazines, James Patrick Kelly, people go back in time and hunt dinosaurs, recreating that, definitely cool, some little slippage, dispense with it, how many raptors are left, after the kids are switched, why is the movie so good?, the best scene in the movie, the t-rex, the banner falls down, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, something to put in your trailer, when Steven Spielberg dies, so visuals, pure Spielberg, they’re in the helicopter, the stand-in for Crichton, love interests in the movie, the kids are in there too, heading back to the mainland, are those supposed to be dinosaurs, the idea of the book and of the movie, colourful birds, a symbolic hint as to what’s going on, if there is a message of the book, what dinosaurs are like, probably wrong, popularized The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, such good speeches, we’re destroying the planet, the earth’s going to be fine, we’ll be dead, don’t overstate it, weird mental trap, be precise, it hurts for a while, moving the needle, referencing earlier work, I was not a paleontologist in the early 90s and the 80s, middle school, a position being argued for, doing research, a lot like Carl Sagan, a science popularize, the book holds up, the CD-Roms, the kray supercomputers, super-secret navy lab, it has 300kb of memory!, nobody has 3 krays, $80 on ebay now, Malcolm in the book, complex systems are subject to chaos theory, he’s a Cassandra, we do build zoos, see I was right, as a narrative thing, to be charitable, able to interview Ian Malcolm, the first zoos were not very good, video reconstruction based on photographs, a scale flying machine before the Wright Brothers, flying machines, figuring out control surfaces, excited about airplanes, go to the airshow, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Dulles, a space shuttle, an SR-71, downtown D.C., why aircraft are so important, a peak of technologies in a physical space, see and understand and climb into, smaller and smaller, difficult to appreciate, bi plane vs. monoplane and tri-plane, let’s do 4, tri-plane was peak for a while, the shape was more important than the number, by the middle of the 30s nobody’s doing biplanes anymore, this seems to work, the end of the book, cleaning up the details, only eating the things that are high in, catchphrase, ‘they’re turning the frogs gay’, read a lot of stuff, Alex Jones, very defensible, Plato, really wide, crazy voice, he’s a doctor, they read the same stuff, used the word gay?, the tweak on the quote, a really good book, based on science, high concept, describe what the book is about, characters being characters, Snakes On A Plane, Sharknado, best elevator pitch: Jurrasic Shark, The Meg (2018), the action of this book is a lot like Aliens (1986), Alien Earth, monsters get out, all deadly, feed you to their babies, Hobo With A Shotgun, Grindhouse, the Fu-Manchu one, sign me up, covers of books are like that, boob armour, the Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, the premise of the show, a sea-shanty, he’s excellent at this, the book is really good, he’s less good at people than he is a really good stories, Eaters Of The Dead, accessible content, explicitly Beowulf, the other is crazy, sort of a character, an arrogant asshole, the kids are the kids, the scientists are interchangeable, Sam Neil, by picking actors who look like something, what he’s seeing, Ian Malcolm is in the book as a real character, the kid actors, concertizing, relationships and interests, hacker girls 11 years old, very draggy section of the book, chock full for charts and illustrations, the menus of the computer, menu screen after menu screen, how to reboot, skim over it, as a blueprint, the film succeeds in the way that the book can’t, the demon of success, the audience demands other stuff, read The White Company, we must have more Jurassic Park, the curse of success, I just can’t finish the last book, sequelitis, marketing, ranking it in the Crichton books, better than Timeline, the drop in the quality of the writing, he’s getting fettered, a paperback market, he’s not doing the Michael Crichton thing, Disclosure, a legal thriller, the technothriller, Prey, taller and narrower, a babboon or a monkey running a barcode, patentable, life finds a way, the distillation, right to repair, in normyville, aircraft parts, legally impossible to fix their aircraft, extraction stuff, go back to physical media, massive files, 10tb movies, you can do it, going back to physical media, back to horse and buggy, especially on twitter, owning their own copy of a thing, you want your own copy, a big paperback guy, digital, search it, takes up no space, another copy at home, a book server, audiobooks and ebooks in one app, update the language to be more inclusive, like they’re behind, excited about amphibians, a business that’s self-sustaining, follow your interest, getting into rye, fertilized the pig pen, not really into grain myself, that lack of interest by most people means they’re behind the times, find a way to get a computer in the house, I want my own modem, mom, the 14.4 for my 286sx, I’ve heard good things about the internet, cultural lag, subject to forces of control, it’s a prison break, life is a prison break, it’s always been a prison break, ceolcanth is really important, what’s going on in evolution, what normies are doing, playing phone games, tic tock, scrolling vertical video, “brain rot”, Moonraker by Ian Fleming, watchable, Tex Avery, Bugs Bunny style scene, he’s on the last leg, Roger Moore touching a lady’s leg, they fight, Jaws appears out of nowhere, never see the stewardess again, the implication is…, he and another Bond girl, giving the captor the eyes, a wink, which sexy person tied up on the table, funny thing underneath, Hugo Drax is named after Lord Dunsany’s younger brother, Hugo Boss, funny uniforms, Lord Plunkett, big long names, Ian Fleming knew the younger brother who was in the navy, a weird connection, a small world in that class of people, lords and second sons in the UK, they all know each other, why Roger Moore movies are fun and funny, the laser fights, every scene is payoff after payoff, as close to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd as you can get, delightful, they’re just horrible, he’s cool lookin, the cars are cool lookin, there’s no humour, there’s no fun, darker as they go, good action movies, good Bond movies, fairly dark, Casino Royale, so bleak, mommy issues with M, he’s a servant, darker earlier James Bond movies, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diana Rigg at her Riggiest, good to go to the source, almost all of them are Canadian public domain, did somebody fake-up a new James Bond thing?, anti-MSM, that’s a sentence, an anti-trans diatribe, Bond was struck by something, not even a pretense of diversity here, Athelstain, women or non-white or disabled, he was king, so fuckin unbelievable, a human, artificial intelligence is mostly bio, people operating on automatic, some human signed off on it, some estate said this is James Bond suitable material, people want to adapt these things for a different audience, expand the audience, Hunger Games books, teenage girls and people who used to be teenage girls, a boy fashion show, a frequent complaint about many things, they don’t care, PBS guy Charlie Rose, the sequel, he knew he had a big audience of children, he had an agenda, compatible, inevitable interest, a challenge, not mentioned is the big piles of cash, rationalizing it, a sequel is very hard to do, more of the same, too different, the problem, the goodreads ratings are all 3.6 except when it is a series, 6 books into the series, the hardcore fans, the declining number of readers, do not finish, do not rate, a crazy feedback loop, more of the same, The Lord Of The Rings, way off topic, gave up, the story had ended, much more like Sherlock Holmes, this high concept, Snakes On A Plane 2?, Samuel Jackson, one of the coders, Arnold, nameless secondary characters, evacuate the island, random nameless staff, storm coming, core group, random security guards, the chef, killed in the lodge, a security guards desk, is there a body there?, dead people, killed, splatted, eaten, death count goes way down in the movie, a little ride at the beginning, the hero characters, Sattler and Grant, an item, a very good movie move, subverted in the book, he doesn’t like kids, spends a bunch of times with the kids, she’s my grad student, he’s a widower, obsessed with one thing, live out in the badlands of Utah, if he had grown up and joined the military, work for great ideas, a lot of fun stuff, Binary, about psychology, parallel characters, the baddie the goodie, mirror images, a binary gas, mix two liquids on the plane, late 60s novel, early 70s movie, the book cooks, a naked lady on the cover, not a lady in the book, raw psychological paperback mindset, 400 pages exactly, all of yesterday, all week, Robert E. Howard and Hugh B. Cave, The Cult Of The White Ape, see you on the internet.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #545

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Freedom Of The Race by Anne McCaffrey

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Freedom Of The Race was first published in Science Fiction Plus, October 1953

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Rare Coin Score by Richard Stark AND Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
1968 and 2003, 40 years apart, Trent Reynolds, the last of the nephew novels, a mode, somebody’s nephew, The Fugitive Pigeon, a character caught up in someone else’s problem, The Spy In The Ointment, Up Your Banners, the Dortmunders, driving a Toyota Avalon, a driver’s license with no picture on it, Claire is the same Claire, good female characters, quite good, that’s gotta be it, she’s saying similar things, that’s fine, kill the guy in the garage, don’t tell me anything, two guys, roaming over the country, a threesome going, fucking up punks on the boardwalk, making the fight last longer, a call from Handy McKay, there’s something wrong, all the books are great except for The Hunter, a few of the phrases, The Philosophy Of Parker, the vocabulary of what makes someone a *good* person, “self-contained”, Lempkie, the eunuch, Billie, wearing a gun to the meeting, lusting after a girl who obviously doesn’t want him, French is a mirror of Parker, respects until he has to kill him, nothing personal, what makes French a less good version of Parker, getting stupid, getting too hungry, into his stake, heist the heisters, the ultimate no-no, knowing he was going to kill them at the end of the job, we’ll deal with that later, something awesome about the creation of Parker, no first name, part 1 chapter 2, looked like a machine not yet turned on, thinking about nothing, lay waiting in the dark, self-possessed, very remote and cool, Mr. Lynch?, a fateful exchange, I would have fucked you and fucked off, she convinces him, they fuck anyways and he doesn’t fuck off, if the Parker series is a series where the character develops, a white sandy bitch named Belle, New Orleans, always good openings, Biloxi, mentioned again?, the first of that 4 series, a woman tied up on the bed, untie me I need to pee, plans to meet with Claire in 3 months, they’re compatible, Parker’s mentality, home team and away stuff, a deeper insight, she’s not moral she’s squeamish, she just wanted a stake, airline pilot, crashed into a mountain somewhere in Europe, there’s no insurance, an important word in the Westlake universe, as amoral as Parker, confirmed thesis, weird connection, Ayn Rand is a weird lady, The Fountainhead, the characters in it are not humans, the architect, ruin his career, mad enough to rape her, about the art of the building of the beautiful building, we only come together as sexual beings because of our mutual interest, fucking bizarre, inhuman and super-interesting, bizarre, the machine that is Parker, super-ignorant, outer space, how many moons Jupiter has, insurance, he has Claire explain something to him, casing the joint, African violets on the sill, he has to perform, he’s like an autist, he knows what people expect so he performs for them, engraved letters, MCMXLVII, what’s the number?, Diablo Tours, pretend to be honeymooners, she’s a part of the heist, why is that in the book?, Parker doesn’t know anything about things that don’t matter, she’s not a robot, she’s something else, she has to contain her annoyance, she takes out her feelings examines them and puts them away, she’s the opposite of Billy, Westlake’s so good at this, this book in relief, the opposite, trying to put out fires, just goes along, a new hero arises to solve it, the actor, he loves actors and acting, putting on accents, four fifths, pick up a gun and make some decisions, locked up in the estate with the thug outside his door, tricked into it, a manipulation scene, the gun is right there in front of him, maybe I don’t want to die, Jeremy and the wife, toodling along in life, the opposite kind of a book, cut-outs, things that happen in this book, what’s the name of the Stan, Freddy the absolute dictator afraid of a gypsy curse, play along fun, when he goes to the Barnes and Noble, George R.R. Martin, taking a little dig, what happened to publishing, Fire Island, New York, Too Much, And The Band Played On, contrastive books, as much play, Billy Levetard, Bank Shot, Kelp’s nephew Victor, the same sort of character, roly-poly, sweaty, unattractive and pathetic, Nobody’s Perfect, the mark is the finger, insurance scam, sneakin around in alleys dressed in black, the glamour and excitement of the job without doing the work, a serious pro or a poseur, take over the plot, Josh is so passive, everthing sort of happens to him, hapless, a deeper understanding of the english language, hap is luck, what happened, very happy, Josh is just going along, a paper company, playing all the cards that he has, mixes and matches, this shift thing, other characters POVs, security guard, ex-MP, in the nephew book, always with Josh, that out of control-ness, more playful, when he’s in Stark mode, becomes a cartoon, Dormunder mode, well drawn, and precise, a deadly edge, he’s dead, he could have worked with, his professionalism, why French is dead, French assumed Parker was going to bail, the drawing, he’s pal skinned, can he hold it together for one more job, Claire clarifies the situation, it doesn’t work like that, Lempke, Murder Incorporated, Levetard, it’s not William it is Billy, childlike, Parker won’t shake his hand, where the money’s going, coming out of Lempke’s half, everybody’s who’s dead gets their piece, a very strong book, changes thing up and quite works, Westlake’s interest in coins, Lawrence Block wrote tons about numismatist (and philately), a Hit Man who’s a stamp collector, the hobby of kings and the king of hobbies, connections to history, a coin convention, they’re writers, wow man, what would Parker do if he were here, such a good job with backstory, well explained, how you build a character, how you act against another character, until they died, inherited some money, fell into becoming a coin dealer, a felon, these are his friends that he’s betraying, Indianapolis, Indiana, he’s very solid about describing, when he goes to Europe he takes notes, Parker is not driving, everything about this job is amateur, everything goes well until a professional steps in and fucks things up, super-interesting, in relief, double the length, the backstory is superwell worked out, taken money a long time ago, now you’re activated, impinging upon, the plot, slight of hand, Dancing Aztecs, make up a country, so many things that he’s playing with, Fetherbender, Mr. Nimrin, anagrams of each other, a trilogy, so stupid, Chapter 13, David L. Fogware, Enchantress Of Nim, more open to him as he rose, rubbing it in, author reading, new Dortmunder book, a real Barnes and Noble, ENCHANTRESS, some even smaller letters, not quite 7pm, none of them were Mr. Nimrin, so playful, strange people, sixties flower children, cryogenically frozen for 30 years, homelessness, condemntation, people who’d lost their luggage, windbreakers and pony tails, pony tails up front, amiable about it, glad not to be in, scuttling in, slim, bespectacled, pocket protector, a certain amount of jealousy?, annoyance, so popular, he left science fiction mad, Smoke is by him, invisible man burglar story, a phenomena, getting huge, press release, certain enthusiasm, Mr. Nimrin, a fellow carrying a book, the most enthusiastic applause at all, and a windbreaker, over L.L. Bean boots, becoming modesty, two kinds of burliness, the burliness of beer, Donald E. Westlake tapping his own pot belly, what is all this in aid of?, diversion, a little old lady in a walker comes up, his contact, the assassination plot, deep in the book, it never really comes off, Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope, Graustark, Ruritania, Kamastanish, the granddaddy of all these, Double Star, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the one by Winston Churchill, most of Marvel is this, Dr. Doom, Latvia, Latveria, The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, an ammo dump, Charles, lost her mind, she hasn’t lost her mind, she knows that she’s a captive, blow it up, so funny, revenge estates, spite wall, Marathon, is there a Dortmunder character in this book, the Taxi driver, more of a type, not actually Merch’s mom, in the five boroughs, the same kind of character, the type, authors getting trapped in these 7 book series, really really popular, doin well, start something up, can’t you give us another Dortmunder?, series vs. standalone books, specificaly at Hugo award winners, used to be, even now it is still true, N.K. Jemisin, Ringworld, too popular, ten years later, they don’t get progressively better, a “mystery” writer, Mysterious Press, lifetime Edgar awards, this pressure to create series, like Agatha Christie, Poirot, Travis McGee, James Bond, more freedom, he got away with it, anything with your name on it, in the balance, you could only have series or you could only have standalones, weird philosophy of efficiency, he wont put up with anything that’s inefficient, that kind of philosophy is very helpful, professional colleagues, most people don’t read much, because he gets away with it, he makes criminals very cool, most criminals are not professionals, a hardend criminal, when people are stupid in a Stark novel, weird mindset, fun but not philosophy, 52 theory, Laverne & Shirley, schlemiel Schlimazel, bad luck, bad stars, The Handle, The Road To Ruin, similar scenes, the planners, in their own private world, their plan is coming together, the ruthlessness, nobody dies in the Dortmunder books, nobody gets hurt, brutal animal death, implied rape scenes, so soft, it should almost be done as a cartoon, film noir, black and white, very hard, a period piece, this is what the word hard-boiled is for, soft boiled?, poached, worked on equipment of various different kinds, machines fear and obey me, stuff that isn’t following the rules, a lighting circuit, driving you nuts, no fault of his own, a scene in almost every book, you can figure this out, reinforces his collapsing mentality, her tuna casserole, Transylvania Station, Dortmunder’s conscience, a very selective conscience, Drowned Hopes, forces him to figure out how to keep the bad guy from blowing up the dam, Dortmunder has different needs, do they ever get married?, commonlaw, the neighbours think they’re married, a lot of the same stuff disguised by the modes, how writing is done, the theatre, travel, insurance, why is that date 1947?, when Tina shows up in Money For Nothing the book is derailed, Westlake’s realism, Chekov’s gun, it has to be doing a job, it has to work like a red herring, it’s a puzzle that you are solving, anticipated or see how it fits together, a Philip K. Dick novel, scenes vs. that great plot, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, Edgar Rice Burroughs, relies on coincidence to solve all problems, the more experimental Westlake novels, they’re not all equally good, the ideas are not as good, formulaic after the 2nd one, pushes the envelope on the formula, the next book after The Handle, a changeup, Claire is his anchor, even when she’s not really in the story he has her to go back to, an identity that he needs to protect, The Green Eagle Score, Plunder Squad, double the length, Butcher’s Moon, an interlibrary loan to the Yukon, the thrift shop, never see a Westlake, exactly the right time, Michael Crichton, Next and Timeline, people dying, people downsizing, the fact that you can’t get a Westlake unless you go out looking for him, The Actor (2025), Memory, an interesting book, that James Bond one, Forever and a Death, international heist, profit in seeing Westlake in bookstores, there’s gold here, the book industry has gone to shit, published or republished, movie posters good, book covers based on movie posters bad, when Jurassic Park came out as a book, the 80s is sort of the end of good covers, getting to be a reader, either by being bored, an island with no electricity, John Buchan, no pictures, a little invisible man talking to a dragon, Tolkien didn’t want his books in paperback, allow paperback publication, mother’s collection of paperbacks, Samuel Delany, large random, Edna St. Vincent Millay, collected poems, Charles Fort, bored, C.M. Kornbluth, nurse romances, Night Nurse, went to college, college textbooks, parasitology, ecclectic background, science fiction and fantasy, they’re cool, Yoda got me into mysteries, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, full of stupid stuff, changed in the years between, parents were divorcing, a paperback copy of Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration, Disch Delany Dick, new wave, not safe for work/kids, going backwards, not quite as god as you think, 25 times on HBO, lawnmowing money, he’s Fozzy Bear, the way his X-Wing is dragged into the muck, in reaction to that, broadening out from science fiction, Joseph Wambaugh, The Blue Knight, The New Centurions, an older woman, Dancing Aztecs, madcap, the first 2 or 3 pages, that many characters, individual and distinct, you’ll enjoy the ride, Money For Nothing is full of characters, every one of them is fun, the Robert E. Howard, the colours are gonna come up, axes to grind, he never goes into a story without anger about something, plot tricks he uses over and over again, some of the details, that’s clearly a Westlake right there, any walkon character, Josh is the least interesting character in this book, the narrator is much more interesting and judgey, Tina’s great, the actor who’s activated, almost a cartoon, fairly interesting and serious spy story, we had a good show, that Sheckley would be a good choice, paperback mentality.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #544

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Lobo’s Return by Forrestine C. Hooker

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Lobo’s Return was first published in Blue Book, January 1925

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #898 – Jesse and Scott talk about All Flesh is Grass by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, the point in his career, without serial in magazines, what’s happening after 1958, distribution is just awful, Galaxy, Astounding/Analog, F&SF, magazine sales, hardcover 1st, Doubleday, purple covers, it’s ok, mid 60, psychedelic covers, horrible, Foss cover?, spaceship with blowout, a science fiction book, flowers and faces, rocketship = science fiction, dragon = fantasy, good cover or not, where we start, what’s the cover look like, favourite, love this book, a fan, one of his best ones, the suspicion of the main character, suspicion of the flowers, he/it/they be, is it justified?, Simak’s behind it all, trust Simak, aggressively hostile at times, talking to the politicians, personal suspicion, harsh circumstances, losing his business, can’t pay his phone bill, unsettling, am I losing my mind or not?, very Philip K. Dicky, guy standing in his garden talking to his tree, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, a delusional homeless man, careful framing, trying to go for an effect, clunky careful framing, this is just a crazy man, all he has to do to be a secret hero of earth, a solipsistic power fantasy of a child, reinforce that, drinking himself to death, Tupper, autistic?, something wrong with him, the primary source of contact until the phones get going, until the barrier shows up, backstory, setting up the scenario, particular distress, it’s cool, so many Simaks, Dick is similar or vice versa, he really cooks with short stories, that old Del Rey paperback, to read Simak is to read science fiction, kinda true, you think of space, other alien planets, are they really other planets?, what recurrs in his books, humanity is screwing up badly, there’s a way out, a friend named Gavin, the solutions he always gives are fantastical, to the point of destruction, a science fiction trope, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the one with Gort [The Day The Earth Stood Still], we will destroy you, Simak was already on it in 1965, gotten into scraps, town asshole, a pretty brutal fight, blood, the girl runs off, periods of things like that, lash out, a surprise, dogs fight, turning on each other, snarling down on the ground, a real town, Millville, population 127, the town is disappearing, instead of Ray Bradbury nostalgia, I’m still here, world wars, humanity as a species, we are bad because we did nukes, those rockets have yet to go off, putting this collective guilt on us as individuals not to do war, follow orders, like we’re the bad ones as a collection, Bradford or Brad, humanity itself is worth saving, not a Malthusian you fuckers have to stop breeding, Ring Around The Sun, empty and beautiful, mobs, a newspaperman, hip deep in that, he’s seeing everything, the plant is closing, this is key to understanding, look at the news and process it everyday, local news, see the trends happening, the tv says there’s going to be good weather next week, the current state of humanity, WWII, throes of Vietnam, greed, corporations, extremely pessimistic about humanity, an optimism about what humanity can be, on the whole humans good, extreme ideas, the knowledge of the universe, this incredible knowledge, tap that, solve these problems in ourselves, recurring stuff, that optimism, laying down some goodness, the interaction with the flowers, he does talk to an elm tree, through the telephone, in his best novel, Galactic Pot-Healer, talk to Mr. Job, an ai that put you out of work, go to Cleveland, radio broadcasts, look in your toilet tank, doesn’t like being mentally ill, you are needed for a great project, a return to a belief into something bigger than yourself, raising the sunken cathedral, find a purpose, a novel of a romantic poem, the romantic poets, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth, continuous as the stars that shine, along the margin of a bay, they outdid the sparkly waves, a jocund company, the blissful solitude, no alien intelligence inside these daffodils, how’s he gonna resolve this book?, what if we’re cut off from this possibility, the other species can cure humanity of its ills, they aren’t just healing us, they’re replacing the broken things in us, witch-doctor, penicillin, an alien economy, the way the romantics work, you go for a walk, the birds of the air, the grass, the trees, then you go home and you write it down, an experience of nature, a nature walk transformed into a piece of art, aliens who want to contact humanity, a solution, they need our love, they need us to appreciate them, an olive branch, the flowers say, we need living space, we have no hands, for the benefit of each of us, many earths, a common aim and purpose, that’s heavy, that’s the threat, suspicious of corporations, Monsanto says, they’re resistant to this, the terminator gene, making ip laws on nature, when Simak posits some aliens, can’t we just trust them, he is the god of the book, this god is good, malevolent aliens, if Lovecraft wrote this book, Mars is a dead world, never been any evil acts done on Mars, a kindly touch, some encouraging words, that’s a sterileness, uplifted, in a quest to enjoy symbiosis with other minds, first contact, we meet aliens and we become friends, a flower garden, cherry blossoms, blackberry blossoms, we need a closer relationship based on me eating part of you, what those bones were, they wiped themselves out, never developed properly, delivered to his plate, the money being grown by the flowers, not real money, what makes it not real?, it hasn’t been officially blessed, cynical and looking for trouble, a communist!, even they’ve got a program in Mississippi, how important money is to us, if each of those bills had a new serial number, it’s above our pay grade, be able to spend it, break the system, some flaws with the book, the dome, Under The Dome, definitely came from this, aliens again, playing a game, adolescent, he fails on his endings a lot, what it did to that small town, The Tommyknockers, The Mist, the scene in the grocery store, we gotta sacrifice one of us, I should sacrifice myself, the homeless guy rushes in, back to his father, looms over the book, the original sin, cultivated and cared about them, a repayment, an investment, a very weird book, it takes the sentiment and thought behind romantic poetry and turns it into a science fiction novel, the barrier proves this guy’s not crazy, to prove existence, pass in between, permission somehow, there’s something there, create the crisis and the proof, if this were a Philip K. Dick novel, calm down bro, running around town, an invasion like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, the horror of mental illness, thinking people are demons, a man in crisis, good hints, what’s she gonna do, all the great people who came out of this town, self-insert, a business guy, not super-imaginative, straight laced mind, a means to fund other projects, set aside some of this money selling gadgets, write cheques, really cool, a collection The Gentle Invaders, The Midwich Cuckoos, the barrier, a whole town in put to sleep, 9 months later all the women are pregnant, still rape, a new hybrid human alien species, too gentle to make the aliens malevolent, Leigh Brackett, Fritz Leiber, Mack Reynolds, 1969, Hans Stefan Santesson, editor of Fantastic Universe, Edward D. Hoch, 60 cents, Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1966, Judith Merrill’s review, long winded, right after Earth Abides, John Christopher, personal nomination, conformity vs. individualism, some zombies too, no hasty conclusions, solid speculative content, oxymorons, meaningful and eminently readable, our protagonist is an individuals, mobs, rumor vs. fact, there will be peace, we will be nuked, panic, she’s bringing her own stuff to it, him vs. the government, some bigshot through the dome, NPCs, quite well realized, the father of the girlfriend, knows himself, this is your money, here have a drink, self-concious of his own limitations, a history of all the people in this town who are making a big impact in the world, they’re all inspired by the flowers, no?, a walk in the woods, lovely daffodils, a spring in your step, the beauty of the nature, a Doc Labyrinth story, shoes that come to life, a living thing, zany guy’s house, latest invention, The Preserving Machine, allow beauty to survive nuclear war, transformed into a living creature, lay eggs or gestate, life persists even in the face of disaster, these plants preserve knowledge and truth in themselves and want to share it, the animals that come out are reflections of what Philip K. Dick thinks of the chamber musicians, deadly serious, plant life is the thing I’m talking about, jokes about my favourite musicians, this field of flowers is beautiful, cultivate your own garden, write a poem, maybe someone will like, a rifle and a tower, kill all the politicians who want to make war, get better soil, love it, very biblical too, these are not even a monocrop, they can be sticks or vegetables, fruit, how amazing fruit is, eat me, take me, get my seeds elsewhere, this deliciousness serves us both, our relationship to animals, chickens, beef, get upset, how can you eat that thing, a creature, ready to be harvested, what they’re there for, this planet must be sterile, only because it can feel pain, our relationship and its relationship with us, the whole animal business, a lot more nightmarish, the John Wyndham line, the humanity, cause war, I’m cool the way I am, a good book, a line in here, they need us, use their knowledge, make it meaningful, take on meaningful, a computer database that’s no one using, the big PDF page, to read an appreciate, to turn into audiobooks, the cost is your time and clicking on it, self-aggrandize, treasure must be appreciated, not forcing your hand, crappy stories too, not trying to curate, this is exciting, make it more available, it would be bad if nobody ever appreciate it, building a library and nobody comes, adds meaning when people use it, a beautiful sunrise, a beautiful starry night, it needs to be percieved to have its full flower, never been an evil act on mars, nobody tortured on Venus, no genocide on the Moon, a really satisfying chocolate bar or what have you, thumbs up!, really happy with him, more than half-way through, the repeated theme, industry is disrupted or be disrupted by new technology that makes everything free, The Visitors, free car, free house, forever car, forever house, all super-cheap, gadgets, little things that can be made in that small town factory, outside factory in the next dot over in the endless, The Fisherman aka Time Is The Simplest Thing, the impact of technology on people, how can I make my life more like that, mow more lawns, get more cash, give money to this hospital, some scam, when a corporation is trying to get me to give money to a charity that’s some scam, we have to do something, go for a walk, be kind to your neighbors, don’t give into the idea that you are guilty of what your government does, Heinlein being in favour of the Vietnam War, I’m in favour of good things and not bad things, thinking about the people around me, think locally, notice the effect of the global effect, you have to be nice to Tupper, he lies to the mom, the bum who’s always scrounging for money, intimately invovled, a very subversive sort of take, eccentrics in a small community are worthy of attention and not being dismissive, where the bum lives, drinks himself to death, a fellow human, he’s asking, something there, gotta do some more Simak methinks, on the other hand, a PDF that eventuially got turned into an audiobook, Hellflower by George O. Smith, a short novel, the cover has a lady, a space surfer on the skids, an alien chemistry of unstoppable evil, the flowers are bad, a star master, soul shattering ruin, the one unparonable error, he didn’t die, bog on Venus, the cool gleaming sea of deep space, the vilest parasite in the universe, peddler of a poison, plants bad book, plants good book, fun, before we do another palate cleanser, a good narrator, 160 pages, nice and short, Saturday May 30, nice short book, Hellflower!, some Virgil Finlay, quite pretty, considering reading, not public domain, 3 pages, pretty cute, from the same magazine, Startling Stories, Take A Seat by Eric Frank Russell, I am got through, much luck, psycheport machine, tremendous, something knows, must slither like mad, might never find again, I am excitement, his thing, it call strong, get self sender activated, deep and dark, never done before, foice-sensor, counterswing circuit work, is mighty brilliance, streakiness, of what I do not know, not like mine, nothing but dark, am slow and careful, hearers on top, only two hearers, true mind cry behind noises, much poor, one this side one that, feets, what fore these bits, no fouice sensor, many hard bits in body, other think, it want to keep it maybe, Jelap, everlasting in dark, it know smell, other thing, as for reptiles, smell only olfactory spray, if eater is much small, have thing in it, flat soft, not dexterous extensibles, come cold and round, try to move feets, suddenly I find eyes, seek sensors, much poor only two, maybe eyes discarded, am fool, eyes have soft covers, blingbirds, much laughing for relief, there is four things, have wearings over bodies, shiny bag, two stiff tentacles, white and soft like bark bugs, mind call, much gentle, none receive, no controls, I am seated, sound noise, controls might injure, they make noise with eater, force wind, sloppy gargle, odd one with bag, very white, make think they see me inside, hold himself much white, he help it up when other arrive, enormous strain to reach me, is foolish not to tell, involuntary, shift feets a bit, show psycheport, shift feets, they much stupid, with eaters, one odd comes close, looks inside, middle cold thing I felt before, how can I make noise deep inside, do not like me, put wet on it, touch this, that, they is finish, much white, clamour in distance, stiff tentacle, light go much low, elctron fluid through me, they deading me, an alien sense its way through something, the alien has transferred consciousness to a human, the alien is in the human’s body, the wife or the husband, I am Jelap, I am the guy who’s not here, an electric chair, wanted to not be there, reached out into the universe, experiments on an alien planet, the dying or just shocked body, wild, the key for me, this is horrible, odd one comes close, is he alive?, middle cold thing, stethoscope, cannot hear me inside, trapped in this body, a couple of Lovecraft stories, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time, travels the world, steward and caretaker, 30 years older, finishing the lecture, they regress him, vegetable people, they’re explorers from Earth’s early history, transferring their consciousness, plant monsters, cute, a good one for Reading, Short And Deep, a great story, class in five minutes, date not set yet, bringing Rose with her?, so little of her husband, a little bit of email, a computer thing, a major computer guy, switching jobs, take care.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #543

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man by W.M. Stannard

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man was first published in The Black Cat, October 1900

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #897 –Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim

Talked about on today’s show:
family names, English people are weird, disappointing, what year this book came out, a prolific writer, the reader’s digest version, it’s really cool, no one else has read it, post WWI, it has to be 1920, there’s a movie in 1921, a weird and good book, the ending obviously, four different things going on, the 39 steps meets The Prisoner Of Zenda, a lot more swordfighting, talk about previous swordfights, he fell on my sword, came away with a broken arm, it skips all the fun in a certain sense, subdues Robert Urthank, smokin, alcohol, a lot of guns on birds, like it a lot, the only way it could be constructed, a new student, choose your own adventure book, if you do this turn to page 18, death, premature imprisonment in a skull mountain, the best ending, rewrite this as a Choose Your Own Adventure, do you drink the whiskey?, at some point in the narrative, the author tricks us, a possibility, really suspicious, my fake wristwatch that I don’t have, that’s a slip-up if…, the main character is called by his proper name by the narrator of the book, the twist is he’s not lying, it comes out of nowhere, a clever book, oooh!, The Sixth Sense, sitting around in rooms with a little kid, a good twist, missed the twist, the revelation which was kinda cool, massively improved, do you go on another hunt?, do you go in the black wood?, is this a little Hound Of The Baskervilles thing too, her brother who’s mentally deficient, we don’t have the butler, we’re supposed to be in on it, very cool, how can you do this to me?, I was not your buddy Leopold, does the book play fair?, misses something he should have known, I’ve been gone for so long, he also was gone for a long time, a teenager, a trick for us, in on the secret, the German guy, we will expand!, we need breathing room, use this for inspiration!, take my papers, hold them for me, two documents that are opposite, Germans are nice fellows, evil conquerors, in combination with the black wood, haunted place from the past, a body buried there, Baron Ragstein, his own demon in his backstory, his real demon?, fought a man and was exiled, mirroring, at Oxford, both at the same school, one is charged with the other’s bills at school, a nice little touch, a very good condensation of scenes in the book, other Universal Horror movies, a werewolf story, the calling in the night, a fakeout, clearing the black wood, the resolution of the valance, which is he?, the spy or the counter spy, he’s the hero, we never see him meeting with the British, the white linen, what happened in Africa, Africa changes a man, the cousin, Africa, India, all the same, the women are black and there’s lots of beasts, he took the Baron’s money, and followed the Baron’s plan, quite striking, guys gone to seed, the first of his name not to waste all his money, degenerate, regenerate, the family line always degenerates, a Lovecraftian family, in the basement eating your friend, I’m paying off the family debts, his skin looks better, standing a little straighter, like you’ve been a military uniform, a great surprise as a possibility, the author knew what he was doing the whole time, turning old novels into Choose Your Own Adventures, poor student, every poor kid, The Great Gatsby, a rich guy observed by an acquaintance/friend, the very first Hard Case Crime book, Grifter’s Game, conmen, a supersolid horrible noir awesome ending, the lobby was air conditioned, his tone apologetic, every stinking dive, palm up, he liked to receive it, a great opening, the girl is tied to the chair, making her a heroin addict, the great dissipation, you don’t want to have him for a boyfriend, great writing carries you from page to page, overly long, the lack of action, The Thirty Nine Steps is a bad book in a certain sense, written during the war, a spy book, a chase sequence, Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, at the Eagle’s Nest, some SS guards discover him, he goes to ground on the run the whole book, it never says Adolph Hitler, a WWI book with the knowledge of WWII, awesome pace, what’s going to happen next, Hitchcock movies, this is a spy book, is it though?, you’ve got a secret mission, what’s the special mission?, elected maybe?, an English nobleman that’s secretly a German spy, spend all this money, we will back you to the hilt, the meeting with the Kaiser, a cameo, Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Kaiser Wilhelm, over muscled Kaiser, we’re going to win World War One, a fluff piece of fun, a really good twist, not as tight or compelling as Lawrence Block, pre-war English dialogue, not well remembered, The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, his poetry for children, Treasure Island, how often have you thought about Kidnapped, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, it has been spoiled, it is very possible…, the way the book was written, bad writing?, the Englishman was seen in Africa and was not dead, he’s in the room with us right now!, the rumor is true?, the way the book handles this is to never give a definitive reaction from our viewpoint character, too long for what the idea does, Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde, a cool idea, Two-Face, a man who is both men, it works better as a film, never being inside somebody’s head, the camera goes to their pov, or over narration, doing the original star wars with old Luke, narrating the events of the original star wars, I didn’t know at the time, now I’m a blue milk addict, you can do things with viewpoint, on a desert island, Chagos, Prisoner Of Zenda everytime, on every page level, piled up coincidence, sparky and fluffy, almost a play, drinking and meetings, a little romance, the romance storylines, falling in love with Lady Domini, she’ll find you out, she’s a very nice kid, Hungarian princess, unrolls the scroll, their both in exile in Africa, killed a guy, disgraced and can’t come home, a collision in Africa, the way I’m going to kill him, very very salty, passive aggressive way of killing somebody, fighting to the death off-screen, the flashback to that fight at the end, make the whole movie filled with lots of flashbacks, Memento (2000), tell the story backwards, nice awesome noir reveal, have meaning in his life, the only thing that matters is me, companion books, now let’s see it from the other guy’s point of view, which universe you’re in, a burning desire to live, that setup at the beginning, that contrast at the beginning, beaten down and thin, the shakes from the alcoholism, erect Prussian, definitely the German guy, turned his entire life around, that’s the mental work we have to do, if you’re not second guessing the book review already, a goodreads review, 1 star, is that guy lying to me, you used to have curly hair?, can you grow out of curly hair?, a very girl book, lack of outdoor action, The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, a swordfighty action movie, no a brooding plotter, clockwork vengeance machine, swordfights with people, work em in there, it would make sense for either persona, on the riverbank, the most interesting character, madman, the schoolteacher, a nice period piece, rowing, the fencing team, a big smite on his face, a secret scar, why he can’t get undressed with his wife, new scars, a birthmark, arm break, not a short book for what it is doing, that big a disparity, Timeline by Michael Crichton, condensation, the movie just zips along, a few too many filler scenes, repetition, adapt this well into a film, fun movie stuff, the definite film version of this is yet to be made, Trading Places (1983), The Prince And The Pauper by Mark Twain, Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, inherit the kingdom, they’re both barons or a baronet, a woman back home who’s mad/in love with him, injuries and deaths on both sides, the balancing act for the mirror, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, for the present, a call me Ishmael situation, making a joke about the publication, this other kid, degenerate gambler, reflected badly on the narrator, a long short story, stabbed in a swordfight, split personality, a split self, which one am I, The Prestige, a very good book, an estate in it, a weird dark land, a confection, a bon bon, very delicious, greatly declined, the Star that was E. Phillips Oppenheim, lost authors, no champion, Mr. Grex Of Monte Carlo, 2 books a year for years and years, the concept binds him in certain ways, the secret he wants to reveal, knife’s edge, a certain distancing effect upon the reader, imagine this as a Hard Case Crime book, the first 16 cover proofs, what Charles Ardai was doing, he took a Sherlock Holmes story and published it as by A.C. Doyle, a screaming lady in a nightgown, contractually obligated, I wanna tell stories about the KKK, the mormons, playfulness of an author in his element, a good place to be for a reader, in contrast, some people on the internet are either biobots or dumb, a photograph of some books at the drugstore, food deserts, book deserts, you have to walk into a driver, the newsstand, the spinner rack, the gas station, stumble across things, more and more unusual, the oasis of the library, free books on the internet, you have to go find them, confronted by things that attract your eye, a bbq place with great smells, thousands of views, silly comments, too many James Patterson and Bill Clinton, who wrote this book?, a Stephen King, new paperbacks out now, a wasteland, the same thing is happening with movies, kids these days are not watching movies, never watches movies, old movies, so many rereleases of classic movies, not the reboot, make another couple million bucks, once the culture of film becomes so backward looking, breaks that cultural transmission, theatre, the stuff they put out is limited, an apartment near Broadway, some variety, elitist, ballet, new operas, performing the Nutcracker a dozen times a year, a high culture low culture, horse racing and dog racing, just degenerate gamblers, just dog food, if you thought that it had value, subsidization is another scam, lots of scams going on, the point of the movie The Producers was, something special about the book one, the codex as we don’t often call it, the paperback, the publicity materials, they did the thing, “pulp revival”, Pulpcovers.com, noir and hardboiled, fantasy, high fantasy, low fantasy, dragon on a big pile of gold, little invisible guy, The Black Arrow, N.C. Wyeth, anything N.C. Wyeth draws you in, Men Of Iron by Howard Pyle, a movie, 1891, a student of Howard Pyle, impulsive rash, hard knocks, carefully watched and guided, a key player, too many possibles, early boy’s adventure, middle school, a big tournament, barely stand, lifted by a crane, that’s not how armour worked, maybe Crichton read that, responding to it, no one could possibly move in this armour, much tougher guys, speaking with authority, using other sources to make this claim, ignore the weird Victorian ideas about how armour worked, betrayal the Prince of Wales, who’s responsible, Sir Walter Scott is responsible for all of this stuff?, Ivanhoe, 1819, the other Waverly books, more influenced by Waverly and Ivanhoe than any other cultural phenomenon, plays and books, other than music, less about story, patriotism, Charles Dickens, an industry unto himself, now we’re James Patterson, a crest to this wave, John Buchan is not the beginning of the wave, books start coming into their height?, as soon as you get paperbacks, cheap entertainment, mass market, that attraction of the cover, grab the workman on his way to the cover, a scantily clad screaming lady on the cover, with a brass bra and a leg cling, beware of the 3 volume novel, Oscar Wilde’s, if not him, the cheapest thing is ticktock, reconstruct his life, wait until sleep comes, they’re watching youtube shorts and tiktok shorts, it’s right there in your hand, riding a bike while looking at his phone, everybody is looking at his phone, listening to my phone, consuming video, playing a video, this is the new phenomenon, a very heavy hardcover from school, the death of…, did the book industry do it to themselves, Hollywood definitely did it to themselves, easier lower common denominator, cheap and easy, trying to relax, mass market entertainment, Doritos taste better than celery sticks, project right into my eyeballs, old tv, a lot of writers from books, a lot of plays, adaptations of stuff, regular broadcast tv, unbelievable, 9-1-1, everybody on the show is retarded, a fire in space episode, I can’t believe this got produced, the thing that used to produce Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, even easier, free, the most addictive possible content, plugged directly into your brain, the Larry Niven, a tasp, just pure pleasure, the way you get interested in the theatre, essentially dead as the major media, a skinsuit of was the most popular medium at one time, Lincoln was shot in a theatre, shot by an actor too, the music hall, if you want to see this play played out, the best actors, the perfect version of it, why would you go to the theatre, further down that path, it was always low-brow, the friction was the point, as things get easier they become worse, computer games, super compelling, home computer, school computer, that’s where the money is, a little more interesting, guys in their 50s, I wish my kid would just play a game, watching livestreams of other people playing games, games teach stuff, stuff about geography, almost every time it’s some singer or a video game, the literary people can’t get work in literary places, independent, a guy in Finland making Lovecraft games, popular culture, this legacy of older stuff, not born into the pulp or paperback industry, are we the weird outliers?, it’s awesome, we can find an old book and appreciate it, lost treasure, enjoy it, appreciate it for what it was doing at the time, a level of appreciation, whoe’ver’s listening to this, 80s and 90s kids watching movies from the 50s and 60s, Lawrence Of Arabia, I heard it is really good, short attention span, the Jake Paul of authors, a modern sequel of The Cannonball Run, Camille Paglia and Slavoj Zizek, slop videos, I’ll do anything for attention, the personalities have changed, the rat pack guys, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, pretending to be priests, a couple of hot girls in a Lamborghini, guy who thinks he’s a superhero, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), already old, middle aged people in the audience, Buster Keaton, Spencer Tracey, Don Notts shows up, that pool of people who fit that mold, Jack Chan was introduced to the world, Jamie Farr, Roger Moore’s biggest fan, facial surgery to look like Roger Moore, that meta-stuff, weird reality, what’s the mcguffin?, just the pleasure of having done the race, bragging rights, trace it all down, the blame on lack of land reform, 1958?, the newsstand corporation, the kid who inherited or whatever, distributing books and magazines, in 1953, in 1958, down to 10?, back to 4, no distribution means no eyes on magazines, tv from the 1950s, shifting tastes, a lot of it went to paperbacks, a whole different channels, comic book stores, even that’s not doing well, vhs was a new distribution system, laserdisc and all that stuff, early access, you don’t understand it, it may have gone terribly, Gilbert and Sullivan, expensive, don’t live in England in the 19th century, some new medium before the tasp, vr stuff happen, the theory there, get all that exercise, watch someone else streaming, the rise of livestreaming videogames, so passive, mostly scams, massive amounts of scams, corporate subsidies to political ones, look at the chat, almost not even words, strings of emojis, people alone looking at a guy playing a game, not particularly interesting or smart, a lot of euphemism, bizarre and pathetic, complaining about pulp magazines being badly written, are they James Patterson bad, incompetent filler, the editors did a pretty decent job of rejecting stuff, professional editors, next month’s issue, this was a lot of fun, good stuff now?, hype for things of the present vs. hype for things of the past, it is happening, a new John Lange novel, the drawer book, A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton, not co-authored, a Tom Clancy in that picture too, an Agatha Christie, you can’t trust it, there’s an estate there, fucked with her whole career, And Then There Was One, out of copyright, less likely to have bad books out there, rewrote The Cats Of Ulthar as a cute story for children, baby’s first Cthuhlu, Dr. Seuss versions of Lovecraft, pre-ai, The Tomb, print editions probably still being made, cheap public domain classics, in one volume, faux leather, slap the gutenberg text in there, new introduction if you’re lucky, all about the money, not about the ideology, an honest mercenary, Ian Fleming, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Guy, all Canadian public domain, through and past, Jurassic Park, a month out, “so so”, that’s fair, so okay it’s average, the book has merit, hauled into its saddle and can’t fight on its own, see you on twitter.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #542

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Thank You M’am by Langston Hughes

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Thank You M’am was first published in The Langston Hughes Reader, 1958

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #896 – The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, read by Tom Weiss.

This novel was first published in 1920.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (7 hours 56 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #541

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Promise by Richard Welles

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Promise was first published in Manhunt, September 1954

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about Timeline by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
1999 novel, a very chonky book, 464 pages, Congo?, this genre of Crichton, John Lange, a lot of success, Stephen King syndrome, a writing machine, weird psychological stuff, powerful books, drinking, cocaine, a stern talking to, a post-Jurassic Park book, went forward, The Andromeda Strain, a great novel and a very good movie, Eaters Of The Dead, A Knight’s Tale, electric guitar jousting, they look pretty similar, pale versions of Neo from The Matrix, remember it fondly, rock music, condensed it in many ways, 36 hours, cut out a lot, weird changes, trivia wise, the movie that broke Michael Crichton, rolling over for every Jurassic World movie, Jesse doesn’t believe in spoilers, making the French the good guys, Lady Claire, less of a complete shitbag, you’re the special one that I love, she sleeps with the abbot, apparently that works out, a woman worth abandoning your timeline for, projecting, a very Michael Crichton, the protagonist of the fictional text woven into the Lucasarts Tie Fighter game, X-Wing, collector’s manual, in my bedroom, study up, Star Wars novel, secret conspiracy with the emperor, Crichton’s brain, the Elephant, Joseph Merrick, the most cool things, too many characters, some other handsome guys, villainous guys, a Scottish guy, a good cast, the girl, looks sweaty, rock climbing, caving, a big unweildly book, really cool stuff in it, Cricthon’s outsider science fiction status, Asimov of H.G. Wells, King Solomon’s Mines, War Of The Worlds, The Terminal Experiment Man, Frankenstein, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, literally starts the same, suddenly a knight charged at me with a lance, that’s not a science fiction novel, getting the facts right, mythological space, tons of fuckin research, the 100 years war, necessary for Crichton, just French and English, a few subtitles, wave away the language problem, really good excuse, suddenly communicate, Occitan, prot-southern French, standardized post-Napoleon, regional thing, more confederated, the official French dictionary, Quebec, lots and lots of castles, a lot of renactors, French speakers, woodsy Canadian, Eaters Of The Dead, armour looked pretty good, all fine, Castlegar, two houses somewhere, a real budget, the script, why movies work (popular or not), viking barbarian land, a smaller scale setting, dozens, one magnetic character, Paul Walker, fun to watch, part 10 or whatever, so American it’s shocking, Billy Connolly, the most California guy to ever live, so blank, not designed to be a movie, a treatment for a film, a bastard sword, so many things going on in it, 7 characters?, trying to do a lot, the whole universe explanation for it, this mystery, the guy in the desert, never explain, yes they don’t, the flaw that they missed, what’s wrong with the book, it’s a criticism of the new tech bros that are comin, the Elon Musks, as opposed to governments, zany experimenters, all corporate now, corporate criticism, he’s like the facebook guy, he’s like a Zuckerberg, they want to kill him, the book feels colder, the evil megacorporation, definitely a jerk, master race, not yet, in that direction, hints at some of that, we’re gonna have to kill you now, why does he do that, prevent a pr disaster, we need him to die, it gives us catharsis, the catharsis for the film, like Gomez, immediately beheaded, bubonic plague, loves history, science, medicine, combines all of these things together, Travels, astral projection, he’s not a druggie, breathing exercises, accessing inaccessible parts of experience, weird tricks, weird weird guy that’s supersmart and now dead, Arizona, France, Eruption, Vulcan, marketing at train stations and airports, all Dean Koontz titles are like this, all the same, you have to make it dumber, a Star Trek book, we have to fix it, this concept, instead of doing as a playful satire, quantum shit, it’s not novel, he’s doing that sort of work, not basing it on the golden age 50s stuff, he seems to have no interest in it, not everything that Wells wrote was science fiction, creating it independently, hit the same checkpoints, checkboxes, this mode of science fiction, infodumping, Jesse loves Ringworld, flicked into existence, the same idea, talking to an alien, big dumb object, all about sex, a sex companion, Teela Brown, Nessus gay sex?, Speaker, females are non-sentient, weird drives, very silly, the human characters, Merrick, the only intriguing character in the book, screen time, that’s what’s wrong with the book, cool ideas, well developed, stuff happening, when you go back in time, a first person one guy story, here’s my story, sidetracks himself, a double text, interspersed, thins was bullshit, we can become annoyed and like that annoyance, the found document with a frame narrative, you gotta get them out of your system, everything worked that day, not every souffle, different ingredients every time, don’t change a thing, keep experimenting, more of that, what most readers want, give it to me again just like you gave it to me before, BBC piece from the 70s or 60s, 38 women live in this council house and all begin their day by shaving, down to a formula, that little doc, how poor these authors are, ladies go to the library and borrow the books, the dustman, the library’s fault, disposable books, more different, stretch you legs, good ideas and a noble failure, all the action, none of them are essential, not core, better Crichton books out there, way better, lost city in the jungle adventure, dropping people in the middle ages, too much flashing back to the company in the desert, no fucking idea how their technology works, how any of this works, shooting in the dark, you don’t know how any of this works, that’s all cool, drop it for the movie, one place and time, too much time back in the office, stuff’s happening, escaping across the rafters, each of the modern characters, important later, she was brought in to clamber over the ruins, practice our longbow skills, a good setup, it doesn’t gel, fine but forgetable, a fun character, a terrible person, the scene with the abbott, a surprise, she’s the one that comes out, not a faker, the opposite of Crichton is L. Ron Hubbard, a writing machine, gimme a picture I’ll write to that, John W. Campbell, things that he’s gonna be writing about, the sci-fi magic wand, completely accurate, Harry Stubbs, Hal Clement, Jerry Pournelle, what if there was a world that had this gravity, Mission Of Gravity, heavy gravity planet, shaped like centipedes, how would your existence be shaped, Flatland, essay?, text, going with an idea, competent characterization, infodump is important, a 15 hour book, about to do the time travel now, quantum foamy book for the first five hours, understanding what the concepts are, the transcription errors, why the badguy can’t get home, bones are misaligned, his arteries don’t line up, go to see the cat, body horror, nose tissue, a third eye, much better handled, the reveal, touched on twice, mishandled, maybe there’s a third guy from the past, no hint, hey pal, a real plot point, the facial scar, a transcription error, a very cool idea, you could do the story without it, makes the book bigger, more interesting, we’re destroying these people, very calm about everything, the tech guy, he’s Crichton, helping us along, how and why things are happening, will the glue hold, what about these water cracks, a pistol?, so the equipment can be destroyed, feels like a puzzle, mashing pieces together to make it fit, it has transcription errors, the book is flawed, it has a schism, the bad guy, Dekker made French, their version of the story, a year earlier, repair the damage, a lot of speeches given, trying hard to do a good book, it just didn’t really land, cool ideas in it, Sphere as an abridged audiobook, reset the timeline so none of the book happens, when did it start going wrong?, intermixed, they’re Epstein people, asshole fuckheads full of arrogance, the experience is bad, raw and talented, super into literature, all classical, ancient scientists, enlightenment era scientists, the list, Jurassic Park, is it good? a great movie, a very good book, the sequel, as a book is really good, 1990, a big gap, 1966, how early he started, late 80s early 90s kind of guy, 1976, The Great Train Robbery, his 1970 novel Drug Of Choice aka Overkill, fake vacations, real vacations, scuba diving, but why?, he likes scuba diving, almost died scuba diving one time, an incredible urge to have sex, he would write it, your sister might read the book, an interesting phenomenon, it’s about interesting phenomenon, flaky new age guy, best explain them, salacious details, living with a girl on the beach, fourth breakup, reset, really strange experience where the cactus was talking to me, evil corporation, giving them diets, fat reduction, Ozempic, helps you stop smoking too, the addiction of eating, the pleasure response of food, the circumstances you’re in are wonderful, everything is wonderful, under a hypnotic state under the drug, really bad food, you fall down, you got that in a tennis match, anything you’re suggested becomes your experience, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, the vacation is in realtime, that would be a way better movie than this, double framing, why is there pain involved?, because film, grimacing into a windmachine, you’re being destroyed, they don’t destroy them in the movie, it’s not even a science fiction movie because they just don’t care, why he didn’t like it, Coma by Robin Cook, organ harvesting, a conspiracy thriller from the 70s, Robert Wise did The Andromeda Strain, John McTiernan, a lot shorter, what went wrong?, a book that works, Rising Sun, weird relationship in the 80s with Japan, their population, all of that came to nothing, a love and fascination and a hate and a fear, not that important, Canada, not super important, they’re treating it like England, except culturally, samurai movies, cars, an economic fear, trends continuing on, Japan will own everything, a samurai comes in to fight RoboCop, that fits the trend, a lot sexier, a high school kid, nostalgic for things that happened before I’m born, adventure stories, an evil corporation, murder prostitutes, weird Japanese sex fetishes, sexual harassment in the workplace, we talked about Airframe, only the Crichtony bits, corporate espionage, expecting it, I know how this is going to go, he’s losing it there, Pirate Latitudes, why wasn’t it published?, whatever happened to him went wrong, State Of Fear, people around the world, still afraid of climate change the way they were programmed to be, the biggest climate change disaster in human history, they don’t actually care, why are we pretending to care, people hate that book, go to Bluesky, a hate for Michael Crichton, what that argument might be, worked in a library, service hours for something, the item list, somebody has to go find that book on the shelf, once a week, 90 books that have been requested, the Dewey decimal system, so many interesting books, a half dozen books, read a lot, in that period, not Prey, 2002, he got mad about climate change, allow him to rant about it, him wanting a forum, if he had a blog, contracted to write a novel, Next, genetic engineering book, horrible oversized paperback, narrower and taller, Dragon Teeth, Micro, Richard Preston, A Murder In Hollywood, an excerpt from Scratch One, Stag Annual, spy book, Grand Prix, Monaco, James Bondy, except for that one, Easy Go, the Egyptian one, Binary, Man’s World, December 1970, the death divers, Pollen or somebody, Norem, somethin to see, how to decide, dinosaur fossil hunting in the old west, other people’s hands on it, it should be good, even him touching stuff, a few left to read, a really good movie, that happens a lot, 3.5 quarters, it didn’t improve the experience of either, very-mid, definitely a movie, technically a film, it’s not awful, they tried, perfectly fine, it doesn’t hold together, he didn’t get to use Sean Connery again, experienced Sean Connery, he directed a movie, it could have been a novel, Looker (1981), Runaway with Tom Selleck, Physical Evidence (1989) starring Burt Reynolds, Theresa Russel, Ned Beatty, well executed, extremely a heist movie, the sexual jokes, very 70s, Donald Sutherland is great in that movie, nobody talks about Looker, Albert Finney, James Coburn, Susan Dey, a scanning machine, 3d models, 3d actors, tastefully #StrategicPlacement, the transcription error, a portable version of this, a hand scanner, 3d printing now, very awesome cool technology, without their consent, a hypnotic effect, plastic surgeon, reusing that idea, that’d be a fuckin awesome book, a book about a theme park, deep dark May, some kind of a trip, in-laws in Arkansas, Virginia, that’s what I got a wife for, absolutely true, they know when anniversaries are, birthdays, caring about that stuff, important for social relations, I need to send the book out on time, The Great Impersonation, how awesome it is to have so many good Simak novels still to read, a writer passed his prime, a Wizard of Oz setup, the past, another dimension, The Visitors, giant big black slabs show up in the sky, 2001: Monoliths, small town Minnesota, they start eating the trees, the cellulose like poor, food for their babies, eating cars, then found in fields, new cars that never break down, ingest a person, some houses, free houses, all built in somehow, magic, not supposed to be magic, high tech, aliens, the final scene, newspaper editor hero, what should be published about what’s going on with these alien visitors, a house out in the woods, shadows inside, people inside, part of the aliens, super suggestive, early 80s, Ring Around The Sun, free homes, super-cheap, the forever car, economic disruption in the United States, a threat in the 50s, by the 80s, Japanese cars, the 70s in fact, super-sensitive, rural America, an experience about human relations, so valuable, oh boy I get another Simak, disturbed, food for thought, Hard Case Crime, they definitely exist, Blackstone just republished them with terrible covers, one of them’s a recycled, next week.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #540

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Wounded by Philip Jose Farmer

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

The Wounded was first published in Fantastic Universe, October 1954

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Handle by Richard Stark

Talked about on today’s show:
book number 8 in the series, he has fun with the titles, The Green Eagle Score, a bunch of scores in a row, what the word “the handle” meant, Run Lethal, feels a little bit like The Mourner, they’re all the same, they’re different, outside the bounds of the U.S., the setup is different, calling back to Karns from The Outfit, the child molester, moving parts, Nazi war criminal, the actual war crimes, dropped threads on purpose, what comes of Yancy?, he’s a fun character, never see him again, the way real life works, Grofield shot five times in Mexico City hotel, 3 Grofield books, dropped threads, a 1 day delay, not on the ball, time to go over this book again, Parker’s problem with him is he doesn’t have a tan, he raped an 11 year old girl, Salsa is a fun character, the gun dealer, they’re always more of the same, the morality is not social morality, efficiency morality, Parker is essentially, everyone else is suffering from main character syndrome, Parker is the stranger, Poul Anderson?, a Bezerker story, Fred Saberhagen, The Adventure Of The Metal Murderer, is Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Through Time And Space, he’s got a little bit of a personality, Data from Star Trek, he’s not a normal human being, Springfield, Missouri, a 4 hour drive, one of the Dortmunder novels, Bad News, the differences between Parker and Dortmunder, hyperfocus thing, really Westlake, Crystal is trying to make a pass at him, doing the job, parallel evolution, Kelp, they fulfill the same function, annoying but useful, ground the other, when the principals are lost in thought, just as autistic, the insight, Westlake with a new assignment, rewrote the ending, needs to be a series, the worst Parker book, clunkers near the end, the character is not there yet, revenge is absent from every subsequent book, what we love about Parker, he is so efficient, makes Westlake’s character work, another dropped thread, far more intelligent, bimballina, standard good writing, she wants to take pictures of Salsa unclad, what do I care?, about to have sex with Crystal, telephone girl, great book, so good, The Green Eagle Score, sure why not?, in the etext, Michael Kramer, dropbox, Stephen R. Thorne, if this cassette stops working, almost robotic, they’re fancy, so cool, Westlake can’t help himself, the red Thunderbird, broken taillight, the heat was bright, heavy, oppressive, all the comforts of home, Gulf freeway, top 40, no wait for warmup, so full of gimmicks, tinted glass, joyknob, a stuffed toy tiger, Houston, each thinking his own thoughts, a seedy bar, Tropical Palm Lounge, little tables, shiny black formica tops, amber tinted mirrors, DW in large letters, so in the book, he’s so funny, it is funny, that thing in Dancing Aztecs, always drives Fury III, a car called Kill, this is the series, Stark fans, really hardboiled, popular with hardened criminals in prison, he has to have fun, we’re gonna look at the guns, the comic relief for the Hamlet of Stark, any character in a Westlake story could be the main character, Grofield opened the door to Parker’s knock, a man to be our Charon, he has no knowledge of popular culture, but Westlake is Grofield, he loves all the literary references that he’s throwing down, a meeting with Gold Medal, two more this year?, setting up the assignment to get it done, it is absolutely a recipe, styles of chunks, new characters, Handy McKay, that idea, we set up these pins, bringing in the cops, the FBI, the scene with Parker there, assessing their situation, disarms the other guy, a butcher’s knife, he knows about coffee, he’s never read a paperback, recreation, on top of a hot sandy bitch named Michelle, he’s not a connoisseur of anything except getting the job done, gets Grofield involved, the money doesn’t matter, writing for money, that’s his living, he loves the exercise of writing great stories, he made a break with science fiction because it didn’t pay, The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution, The Spy In The Elevator, Anarchaos, he loves science fiction, Lawrence Block, Fredric Brown, didn’t go down that path,wrote good science fiction and fun fantasy, paperbacks and hardcovers, crime was what he could sell after the sex market, a writer who enjoys writing and not just having written, one of the best books about writing, out of print, Paul Westlake, running the website, it wasn’t just him in the estate, they all have to agree or have semi-interest, movies, a new Parker movie, in the trailer for the latest Parker movie it mentions this book, a casino off of the coast of Texas, Grofield is black, Parker’s not right, nobody is Parker, Brent Spiner to play Parker, Jason Stathem came closest, none of them are Parker, [The Outfit], Prime Cut (1972), Lee Marvin, a discussion with someone on the internet, always a mistake, on twitter, nobody’s gonna read, you can just do ai images, you can just see it, in an audio visual medium, epic poetry was the main mode for most of human history, go into the cave, paint an animal or two, mostly computer games that are the main media now, books were huge, plays were pretty big for a while, appreciate the medium what it can do, The Grifters, what Jim Thompson was laying down, fuckn hardboiled, first person narration, small town sheriff, of course I had to destroy him, absolute psychopath, two face, coming from a real abusive place, one about a girl, childhood sexual abuse, she’s got this baggage, a family of abusive psychopaths, Westlakes gets it, translates that to film, The Stepfather (1987), a game and tv show, reading the Star Wars novelization, The Predator (1987) novelization, Alan Dean Foster, music, back to Grofield, just as dangerously messed up as Parker is, how he visualizes things, in terms of a movie, a different symptomology, a narcissist sociopath, a show with Mr. Pulpcovers (Alex), Two Much, 3 movies, a Tamil version, how evil the main character is, we love him, justifying the murders he’s doing, lappin it up, part of Westlake’s genius, Kelp for example, the Kelp/Grofield connection, likeable, steal some money from an institution, puts the salt in the beer, oh my god i’m devastated, too much trauma, the same kind of stuff, there’s no murders, funny situations, hardboiled murderers, as a suggestion, Enough, one of them is a great movie, A Slight Case Of Murder, so good, William H. Macy playing the movie reviewer, James Cromwell, first person narration to the camera, I’m safe, breaking the fourth wall stuff, every chapter is a different detective story trope, A Travesty, Ordo [“Orrie”], a sailor, he finds out about it, a spread of her in Playboy, her biography mentions her marriage to him, the French get him, and Poe and Lovecraft, the amateur detective, the red herring, the book was published 60 years ago, framed for a murder that he actually did, another really good one, we should talk about the actual book we were supposed to read, Cockaigne, an ongoing theme, his obsession with insurance, institutions are always and all corrupt, the more corrupt it is, an “outfit”, the “organization”, even that is full of incompetents, her dysfunction, a little bit neurotic, babbling, has to take her hand, make her shut up, while Yancy went off to get the glasses, proud of himself, a hand drawn map, shaped somewhat like a rubber life-raft, medieval trouble, rows of waves, a complex arrow and letter N, sometimes it ran for the sake of running, like a man tromping an automobile accelerator, a souvenir, the pride still in his voice, where’s the frame, Westlake can’t help himself, our man kind of got enthusiastic, what’s the scale of this map, the other map, graph paper, this one simple bear and neat, there’s so much in it, only 4 hours long, it feels complete and it is complete, there’s no island in the Gulf there, a little bit like the Most Dangerous Game, count Zaroff, General Zaroff, after Red and White Russian war in 1919, Sanger, blood-dripper, hunters, big game hunters, it’s all about that fun setup, the FBI wants him for some reason, he runs the island, same reason that Karns wants him, goodie points, InterPol, Westlake’s pretty cynical, on a Navy ship, Congress was annoyed, this island belonged to, the Sea-Bees, a very cynical eye, just laughs at it, like that of General Zaroff’s island, they’re invading it, a mini-bay of pigs, a guaranteed heist, the money on hand, a sobriquet, Charles Willis, dates, professional heister at it for 20 years, they don’t have his face, he had all that work done, to get away from the Outfit, meta matters, what Westlake has to do to make the series go on, loose threads, Parker and Grofield, slowly bleeding to death, follow the Mexicans, Parker shows the gun, one sentence, he sees the handle of the suitcase, in casinos the amount of money that’s on hand, The Jugger, so interested in writing the book, Firebreak, Breakout, one leads on to the next, curved plastic black alien, the suitcase, Ronin (1998), a CIA guy, a McGuffin, the same suitcase, Pulp Fiction (1994), new flooring in his apartment, take his wife to Florida, this robot that does 2 or 3 jobs a year, it’s almost like Westlake’s commenting, when somebody betrays him, the code, his programming code, not some morality everybody’s subscribed to, Conan’s character, that’s different, different kind of guys, Reacher and the book series Reacher, always wandering around getting into adventures, Conan’s not a patriot, he never goes there, much more like a robot programmed to do heists, somebody else’s scam, make the scam work, at last something for me to do, it’s not just the money, it’s also the art, never got married to May, interests other than heists, cooking and dresses, in relistening to the book again, every Westlake novel starts really well, on a boat, Parker was below deck, his motel room, stuck on a boat with a bunch of idiots, waiting for us to get there, voices and hands of New York or Chicago hoods, puts on the cap, the blue jacket, his hands really huge, putting on the costume, fit in more, he knows he’s a robot, fill the pages, these points out of these character, trying to derail my story, diversions of characters, fucking up the perfectly well timed heists, can’t but help himself, it got a flat, just too funny, he can’t help but frustrate Parker, I’m not a hired killer, getting the efficiency done, song and dance, let’s see the job, carry a whole book, more about Crystal, her interest, we meet the guy that puts her on to Parker only over the phone, another of these outfit guys, needs to be told what their job is, that seen with the boy, puts him in his place, you’re my boy, after this job is all well and done, makes him feel good, shuts him up, let me do my job, and as they were coming out later, Parker techniques, when we’re in institutional mode, along greased lines, it’s an institution, a thing behemoth, the right magic word, the right passphrase, opens up for you, treats people like Rubics cubes to be solved, main characters who are not the main character of this particular book, Don Westlake does not write NPCs, he doesn’t believe in them, Heinlein’s brinksmanship, in the news right now, not a great technique for every situation, NPCs are real, ai has always been with us, it is now digital instead of biological, take in and regurgitate, take out the old chip and put in the new chip, people who are programmable by outside forces, a drinking problem, every character has his or her own script, a factotum, Baron, Schultz?, he’s my family, he’s my this, he’s my that, the Hilton in Mexico city, the doctor and the punchy driver from The Man With The Getaway Face, where all of this came from, Westlake was in the Airforce in Germany, “snow top”, military police, gathering up rowdy airmen, not a gun fetishist, he wrote for Manhunt, fact articles, Manhunt’s Gun Rack, Colt Police Special, couple of automatics, he’s not a criminal, doing his fucking homework, become the writer, science articles, Astounding Science Fiction And Fact, back to Adventure, Robert E. Howard, how the mongol empire worked, make it feel like it is legit, goes to Texas, a concert, it is very loud, a racetrack one, super observant, his hand work, glass splashing, orbiting of hands, his signature, let’s look at the hand work in this book, how are people spreading their hands, Shakespeare wanting to act in his own plays, most people don’t read at all, Stephen King’s popular, where’d he get his love for writing?, dysfunctional relationship, Samuel R Delany, very different writers, a six or 8 part miniseries, movies like The Towering Inferno, Superbus?, Supertrain, a parody, transitioned into Greenland (2020), 2012 (2009), flying the plane, [Yakety Sax], takes itself seriously, in the outline it is a comedy, lean into that, Airplane! (1980), The Naked Gun series, Frank Sinatra New York Cop, both Arkins, couple girlfriends, I didn’t mean to kill her, internal monologue, breaking the fourth wall is as close as plays can come to what novels can do, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, greasy Greek, asshole drifter, a ripped from the headlines style plot, spicy fast action, created the grounds for the 50s-60s-70s paperbacks, appreciate the best of a medium, some great Playstation games, point and click adventure, what greatness was there, it’s not disposable in the way of pulp magazines, Edgar Allan Poe story and an Edward Page Mitchell story, blew up, the reprint market, anonymous stories published once, science fiction stories that are H.G. Wells stories before H.G. Wells, faster than light travel, in the 1970s, this greatness existed, somebody passionately going back, putting it in book form, when Westlake goes out of print, share the files, you can’t less this go to waste, too valuable, too fun, 16th 17th 18th century, no champions for it, there’s been a Shakespeare champion for hundreds of years, you need champions, authors huge in their time, we still have the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter sister, Guy Ritchie, it’s not what Conan Doyle was doing, a great writer, can’t appreciate that, he’s not Arthur Conan Doyle, so many people are familiar with the remix Benedict Cumberbatch, fun, riff, taken from stories, A Study In Pink, cute, it’s fine, you can’t just swap in, Jeremy Brett ones, the best adaptations, the most adapted film ever, The Hound Of The Baskerville movies, a preview of the mystery to come, usually the other way around, never leaves the room, solves the whole crime from his residence, where Nero Wolfe comes from, to appreciate the art you need to read the goddamn book, Kahawa, more serious, more grim, the Idi Amin years in Uganda, an adventure, mercenaries in Africa, The Man Who Would Be King, don’t be expecting Dortmunder, he wrote a ton, because they are funny and fun, a new adventure every time, a softness for the Stark Parker book, Grofield’s adventures by himself, Parker’s a blank canvas, the van heist, some of them don’t work as well as the others, late books in the series, Breakout, Ask The Parrot, Cops And Robbers, very Dortmunder like, disposable characters, The Axe, The Hook, Humans, this intellect and this play and this experience of him through his books, a sparkling intellect, write stories that are appreciable, in the body of work, learn so much, anybody who wants to write, he makes it look so easy, working on public domain stuff, Veronica, that spark of what Westlake would become, a modest idea, this is the man who would be able to write really great novels, best novels of the 20th century, so many other ones, some of the things he can do in a book, Slayground, plotting it out, the basic idea, not a great movie either, Peter Coyote plays Parker, Brother And Sister, you can enjoy a Donald Westlake incest novel if enjoy the right word for it, everybody suiciding themselves, Killing Time, standalones, the nephew novels, Call Me A Cab, Somebody Owes Me Money, the bookie’s wife, nobody ever sees her, she never shows up in the book, only scene once, Forever And A Death, his James Bond novel, Hard Case Crime, an audiobook of it too, work on the road, pleasure reading, trying to be efficient, SFFaudio is about audiobooks, hard to get and expensive, the unabridged, 10 or 12 cassettes, pre-internet, blogs came in, 2003, Audible was just starting, podcasts who had not quite been invented, very efficient, washing dishes, folding laundry, almost exclusively audiobook, hard to know the numbers, ebooks are smaller than audiobooks, trying to get people to create audiobooks out of it, Amazon’s going to stop selling books because they’re not profitable, moving paper around, too small a market, after having killed the bookstores, 2 years ago, fixed conveyor belts, publishers don’t seem to be want to be in the book business, short fiction, Cirsova, going out of the magazine business, he’s a book lover, give what they do, covers that are garbage, traditional book publishers, media conglomerate, Lester Del Rey is no longer involved, Storyhack, Racketeer Press, Bryce Beattie, Ace Books, the supermajor conglomerate is kind of an abberation, the way publishing used to be, the distribution, getting it was hard, almost no bookstores, no newsstands, media mail, ridiculous, the post office is in the constitution, a physical object that needs to be delivered to you, trynna strangle it, trynna kill it, let’s pretend, an mp3 file, physical distribution is the hard thing, how China can ship for 3 cents, High Adventure, interesting mix of characters, he must have gone to South America, 3 Guianas, Belize on vacation, almost Jamaican, he writes what he knows, anytime you see something cool, I gotta use that in a book, so many stories about electricians, paint what you see, tiny country, Del Carzo?, maybe suddenly they’ll start producing them again, let’s produce some audiobooks, dry for 5 – 10 years, a great back catalogue, an old Books On Tape producer, bought everything ever produced, no new stuff that we never produced, they were a niche thing, talking books for the blind, bizarre, about the media itself, making a cassette, printing a page, there’s no excuses for that now, everything is cheap, even they make it cheap, many other publishers, still cheaper than the paperbook, commission basis, squeezing the shit out of the audiobook narrators, Scott Miller, 500 short stories, science fiction, sportscaster, loves creating audiobooks, he also loves it, looking at the long tail, that job, as their own publisher, squeezed, physical tape they were recording to, a 1 man operation, his own booth, prestige recording, a Hollywood actor to do it, a narrator, a specialist, George Guidall, Stefan Rudnicki, Skyboat Media, all of Delany’s stuff, a Delany fantatic, dropped off the face of the earth, knock on their door, somewhere in Nevada, Small Worlds, a guy on twitter published in Cirsova, 4 novels, a novella co-wrote with David Skinner, six books of short stories, selling as a package, novels vs. short stories, making virtually nothing from Audible, the beast Rabban, extract extract, decline, addicted to audible as the company, extremely convenient, the number of reviews for products in the last 5 years, nobody bothers reviewing anymore, everything on good reads is 3.6, put a number there, what limited ratings, a trend for audible, people just don’t write reviews anymore, it’s a podcast now instead of a blog, blogs were destroyed, it feels like The Hook, getting traffic too it, bemoaning what Amazon is, your sales can never go up they can only go down, his novel solution to it was fun, Ed McBain, not quite as prolific as Westlake, Cop Hater, police procedural, Downtown is really good, talking for two hours, for my sins, there are more public domain Westlake, need to be bulletproof, vague ideas and a little bit of advice, too sparky, where should we go from here?, one of the Scores, 4 of them, The Sour Lemon Score, it’s gone sour, Lemons Never Lie, The Rare Coin Score, the heist itself, The Blackbird, not just a body problem, almost late for work, run to school,it’s like a treat man, some people like donuts, an old Richard Stark novel, oh boy.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #539

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Travel By Wire by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story |PDF|.

Travel By Wire was first published in Amateur Science Stories, December 1937

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!