SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #576 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe about The Many-Colored Land by Julian May

Talked about on today’s show:

since you asked…

I say that DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP is not anything like “hard SF”

and neither, really, is FOUNDATION

FOUNDATION is interesting (and foundational) but not great

ANDROIDS *is* great and one shld probably be a connoisseur of SF before reading it

really hard question, I usually like to think of SF as something you read from earlier to later – give a sample size of TWO books liked – and TWO disliked – that said, and even with @PrinceJvstin worries in mind

…I would still recommend HEINLEIN – he’s not HARD SF, and he really is SF – HAVE SPACESUIT, WILL TRAVEL is a good starter book

if you don’t like HEINLEIN I think you don’t really like SF – he was made of SF

dont start with any random Heinlein tho – BIG MISTAKE

MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS

and

STARSHIP TROOPERS

are good choices – will make you argue with HEINLEIN which is what a lot of later writers are doing in their books, arguing with HEINLEIN :)

YES, and i would say in that order, but put another book as palate cleanser in between

there’s a whole series of books that are connected to STARSHIP TROOPERS – ENDER’S GAME, ARMOR and going backwards to KIPLING’S poem M.I.

my point is…, going down a hole, a callback to science fiction, hollow earth, people having sex in Stromboli, a very famous science fiction novel by Jules Verne: Journey To The Center Of The Earth, Iceland, a little sex scene, this is all her, there is almost no visual SF at this point, working on a masters degree, very rich, let’s do a 16 hour book, dense even though it doesn’t feel that dense, not just more Tolkien, science fiction-ish, science fiction tropes, pseudo-scientific explanations, the crown, a magic system, H.G. Wells’ Floor Games, wargaming, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in role playing time you build role playing games, Jesse’s repeating because Julian was repeating herself.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #575 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Scott Danielson talk about Flight To Forever by Poul Anderson

Talked about on today’s show:

Saunders (a scientist) : Let’s go 100 years into the future in our dodgy time machine to do some science!

Hull (another scientist): Okay boss.

Eve : Don’t be long! Missing you already!

They arrive in the year 2073!

There is fighting. One of them is killed.

Saunders : Oh no, it turns out the time machine can only go 30 years backwards! I must go forwards again until I find a time when they have the technology to fix this, otherwise I will never see my Eve again. Eve! Eve! Eve!

The Year 2500.

Saunders : Can you fix my machine?

Man : Glurble flert myoop barflurt.

Saunders : Not much use. Off I go again.

The year 3799.

Saunders : Hello! Where am I?

Alien : This is the planet Sol, a minor member of the Galactic Federation, a peaceful organisation run by infinitely wise beings.

Saunders : Who is Galactic President?

Alien : We located the DNA of the greatest of your presidents and cloned him up the wazoo and here he is again, President Donald Trump.

Saunders: I’m outta here.

The year 4500. Bang! Crackle!

Saunders : No good. That Galactic Empire didn’t last all that long.

The year 67,121. Tinkle tankle, tinkle tankle.

Saunders : This looks better. Hello?

Girl in immodest dress: Hey toots.

Saunders: Have youse guys invented backwards time travel yet?

Girl : No, mate, what you have to do is you have to go right round and then it all comes back again, like it says in the Upanishads, or was it Kahil Ghibran, I can never remember.

Saunders: Er, what do you mean, go right round?

Girl : Oh, you know, really a long way forward, to the end of the universe, then keep going, don’t turn left or right, just straight on, and you’ll come to another big bang.

Saunders: Another big bang? Are you sure?

Girl: Yes, really, then you keep going and you’ll find that it all sort of repeats the first big bang and so on and so forth.

Saunders: Well, okay, I’ll try.

Three trillion plus 1973 years later.

Bringgg! The time machine reappears in the laboratory ten minutes after it left.

Eve : Oh hello, you’re back already.

the big bang hadn’t been invented yet, pretty good, pretty interest, an artifact of science fictional elements, Scott really liked it, the length that’s appropriate, not yet novel time, public domain, John W. Michaels aka Mike Vendetti, raids the PDF Page, more neglected than it should be, problematic vs. entertaining, sad story, I’ll Be Waiting For You When The Swimming Pool Is Empty by James Tiptree, Jr., PaperbackSwap, the number one reason to move to the United States: the US Postal Service, media mail, much more alien, language shifts, look at the actual text, the psychic machine, how language was going to change, the commercial interests, certain sort of stuff, maybe 11 books long, a mimeograph machine inside their heads: Brandon Sanderson, physically sell more product, cool despite the commercial limitations, he’s not thinking of the market, it’ll happen to sell too, owes a debt, once you start thinking about any science fictional concept, spinning up all sorts of cool ideas, L. Sprague de Camp’s Language For Time Travelers, he can speak galactic, an invented language in his head, not English forever,

If u were transported 1000 years back in time, and were given ure exact present knowledge of history and technology what job would you be most qualified for?

, there would be no jobs, cook and fish, Paul would be doomed, no skills the Sioux would find useful, Lest Darkness Fall, Mark Twain, The Man Who Came Early, bumbling in dark ages Iceland, why can’t he implement these technologies, the booming god voice, its not the knowledge of how the mechanisms work, how to make it a commercially successful market, who’s your market, Guns Of The South by Harry Turtledove, double entry bookkeeping, Luke Burrage could keep his old job, midwives, grooms for horses, veterinarians, being burned at the stake for a living, Will would be a monk with a wife, a copyist, trapped somewhere baking or making cheese, Karl K. Gallagher, maybe qualified as a sailor, a curiosity and a maybe a burden, Minnesota, walking 1,500 miles in socks, we do know what 1,000 years in the past was like, going into the future is much more science fictional, what ideas can be exploded, the Silurians, more crab and the beach, the Star Trek future, missing out by reading more Philip K. Dick, captain kirk was a film genre, did Philip K. Dick watch Star Wars (1977), this book is too short.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #574 – Flight To Forever by Poul Anderson, read by John W. Michaels (aka Mike Vendetti).

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (2 hours 13 minutes) comes to us courtesy of Mike Vendetti! Flight To Forever was first published in Super Science Stories, November 1950.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #573 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa Vu, and Evan Lampe talk about Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!

Down vain lights, shine you no more!

Never may my woes be relieved,

From the highest spire of contentment

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,

very dark, abstract vs. concrete, love is tied up with death, Jason Taverner, better not to have a pet, better not to have a wife, children, the love of a parent for a child is all one way, better not to have a child, if you keep cutting love out of your life, the meaning of life and reality and, the only thing that’s real is love, isn’t this a crime?, a hard scene to read, if its consenting,can you consent at that age, this is adult this isnt, Edgar Allan Poe married his 13 year old cousin, age of consent was 14 in Canada, the super-Christian cop, Jesus and his love are very valuable (as I arrest you), failing at the institutional understanding of police, the bad guy, the whole long story of being demoted and working to help people in the concentration camps, as the novel progresses Felix becomes the protagonist, Vulcan’s Hammer, Vulcan’s Hammer, so clearly Buchman’s story, making that metaphor manifest, a different arc, learning about different kinds of love, ending in a tragedy, suicide, weird stuff, when he first meets Rachel, in panic mode after having a big fight with his wife, Ruth Ray, I’ve just been drugged with a fatal toxin, so many girls in this, she mistakes him for a student, he’s like 40, a subculture of anti-government forces, they don’t want to go to Vietnam, actively opposed to it, a famous school shooting, a life chain of people around the Pentagon, analyze this world as a dystopia, the quibbles and automated pictures, the fourth D in 4D pictures is the smell, still using records, what your profession is, student means rebel or revolutionary, forced-labour camps, they’re not that bad, the word campus and camp, campus as bases, 1/4 of Terra’s forced labour camps (more like death camps), only during the second civil war, those blacks in the camps, the effete pale clammy students living beneath the campus areas, camps must operate at a profit, how prison works, “barn”, a tattered rubber ball, shafts of light scampered all through him, kibbutzim, sub-surface, they’re C.H.U.D.S., all the children of natives sent to residential schools, a forced labour camp, massive abuse, physical sexual and psychological abuse, it took forever for this horrible system to end, are there people like Felix in the system trying to make things better, good policeman end up getting fired for trying to do the right thing, how the media works, conform and go along, 15minutes per year you’re allowed to say something true and that you care about, what country you’re in, institutions can’t love you, pretending to play by the rules but still a good person (on the inside), have you been offended by anything that’s happened so far, Philip K. Dick’s experience, the FBI gave Philip K. Dick driving lessons, quitting when given horrible orders, how Jesse quit jobs, tormented, whistle-blowers and leakers, disillusioned with the system, Edward Snowden, massive fraud and abuse, Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, the Pentagon Papers, disillusioned true believers, go along to get along or quit, the play of the institution vs. the love of an individual, what does the black man at the gas station think, I didn’t get you’re note, a little heart with an arrow, emoji, something weird happened, not the first black man we’ve seen, a negro crossing the street, they’re protected now like the whooping crane, the slums of Watts proper, overflowing ashcans, drab painted Coca-Cola signs, an elderly black man crossed, an odd emotion, so few blacks alive now, Tidman’s sterilization bill, the timeline, a helluva lot of shit happened between 70 and 80, you just murdered a dude, you can’t jeer at them, and rightly so, the majority of silencers (the silent majority?), a black boy to play with, their birth coupon, two adults one child, ingenious, he solved the race problem alright, he sells headphones, do you know where this place is so I can show you where I live, bio-feedback headphones, plugging into the pornphone orgy internet, he has three children, late night calls, you’re feeling down at the mouth, that note, put your arms around me like a child would, you want to not be by yourself late at night, of the poem, John Downland’s song, he can’t speak, whats going on on his face?, yes I agree completely, I can dig it, you can meet my wife and my kids three in all, going into another universe (through drugs), changes reality for you and the people you’re thinking about, bisexual vs. lesbian, dude I don’t know what’s going on, the incestuous part, a lesbian organization, going to Borneo, it was a mistake, the law has been repealed?, he had them back in the 1960s?, set in 1988, 47 minus 20, they’re living at home, a very subtle sign that Dick is undercutting again, proposing ideas and then the reality of how it work was not how we thought, the onion, the true nature of reality, that Buchman doesn’t respond to the fact of the three kids, the love of children, this soliloquy here, we get the bow tied off with the drug explanation, The Electric Ant, a great concept in philosophy: solipsism, a sticky note that says soft drink stand, subjectivity in the drugs, Faith Of Our Fathers, Eye In The Sky, when Philip K. Dick went to France, you’re the greatest writer ever, the cab driver, I’m a famous writer, never heard of them, a YouTube celebrity, I watch all of Scotty Kilmer videos, millions of downloads and you’ve never heard of them, pocket celebrity, he’s not in the system, almost all of this happened, cannibalized from his own life, Waking Life (2001), a preamble to a dream, what can he do?, this is in my book too, and then he wrote VALIS, the names matching up, a massive number of notes and letters on the Philip K. Dick fans page, Swedish translator, I considered it perfect and finished, ten rewrites, monumental!, turned out to be sentimental, any bite any grit, so strange, his best, no good, done, not done, a feature and a bug of Philip K. Dick, those three children must be adults by now because they’re born in the sixties, what is reality, sometimes its that, where you meet a stranger at a gas station, the kind of love where you have sex with a group of strangers on the phone, the 10 different kinds of love, a lotta different weird kind of love, taboo love, married 21 times, for the 51st and final time, the number of countings, a jibe at his own marriages, Elizabeth Taylor’s seven husbands and eight marriages, as long as her pets, serial relationships, love and grief, I don’t want the grief, the policeman’s tears for strangers, absolute empathy, why we can’t laugh off the phone sex orgies, black box, Counterclock World‘s religion, the gestalt at the end of Galactic Pot-Healer, different collective experiences, Now Wait For Last Year, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Perky Pat, Jason Tavern vs. Jason Taverner, his arrest forms, the pols (police), the private security guard is called a cop, Wyoming, a diesel engine mechanic, a lot for the Philip K. Dick rhetorizer, quibbles are cheap used cars, beer and warmth and coziness, Mr. Tavern is a warm man, Phil Gigante’s shame and dis-personing as a narrator, sexual conviction, DOESN’T IT?, the odor of onion and hot-sauce in every direction, best read again as a paperback, Philip K. Dick’s descriptions of reality, a poet of description, a police flipflap wobbled overhead, what happened to the actual Jason Tavern the mechanic, plastic surgery (a lie), used to be very ugly, Joe Cinadella, the Italian truck driver, Juliana’s camouflage, his fake Italian accent is not real, Philip K. Dick: a philosopher of fiction, the epilogue, what my mistake is: there is no happily ever after, 11 more revisions, there’s never a final a wiping of the hands, always something able to be revisited, real for a moment, however the drug’s supposed to work, it changes everybody else’s perceptions, making it into a film, have Conan O’Brien playing Conan O’Brien, get George Clooney to play George Clooney, magnetic and charismatic, before Clooney was just another shitty answer with a handsome face, how to take a good photo, that weird lit up look, he never tries to show he’s a great singer by actually singing, the name of the song: Nowhere Nothing Fuckup, a lot of swearing, that meta-phenomena, distinctly non-named, like Clem Fandango, what of Felix’s name, Felix Buchman is bucking the system?, Alys Buchman, you’re in a dystopia with a whole history, some government trying to overthrow another part of the government, like in Vulcan’s Hammer, in Marissa’s and Jesse’s top five Philip K. Dick novels, late Dick, the late Dick problem: VALIS and Divine Invasion, Our Friends From Frolix Eight, Orpheus With Clay Feet, originally published in Escapade magazine, published under the pen name “Jack Dowland”, one of Philip K. Dick’s many heroes was a 16th century lutist, a bored man visits a time travel tourist agency, Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein and Jack Dowland?, the magazine may not actually exist, the story’s first publication may not exist, a competitor to playboy, a slick, hoping to read it, King Of The Elves, Rene Auberjonois, Odo on Deep Space Nine, about mental illness, a fantasy story, Francis Stevens’ The Elf-Trap, a movie that died, Paul Giamatti is a Philip K. Dick stand-in, The Owl In Daylight, Beyond Fantasy, a good follow-up for Philip K. Dick, were running out of novels, A Scanner Darkly, a biographical, don’t bother with The Divine Invasion, the titles sometimes elude, A Maze Of Death, Philip K. Dick, Marissa was living in Germany when we started, what is this?, Jesse is a pretty great artist, going to the bar for the drugs with a kid, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany, don’t leave it to years between novels, Philip K. Elves, The Many Colored Land by Julian May, this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, everything made of art on the earth, sorry about that, so sad, the geography of religion, market forces, leading students to death, Chinese students suicide rates, flipping out and killing themselves, She by H. Rider Haggard, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein, he becomes a heterosexual woman, totally worth reading, Heinlein is a giant greater than Asimov is, being provocative in your fiction, that ardent passion, in the halls of worldcon, Evan groks that, Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Marissa would be like: this is trippy, what podcasting’s for?, you want to do your homework, you need an excuse to go out hiking, Jesse’s sister’s daughter’s dog, Paul’s video of a sliding bus.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #572 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, and Trish E. Matson talk about The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Talked about on today’s show:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #571 – The Efficiency Expert by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Delmar H. Dolbier.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (5 hours 3 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox. The Efficiency Expert was first published as a serial in Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 8 – 29, 1921.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #570 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Olav Rokne talk about The Sound Of His Horn by Sarban

Talked about on today’s show:

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The SFFaudio Podcast #569 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Will Emmons talk about The Men In The Walls by William Tenn

Talked about on today’s show:

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The SFFaudio Podcast #568 – The Men In The Walls by William Tenn, read by Phil Chenevert.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (3 hours 36 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox. The Men In The Walls was first published in Galaxy, October 1963.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #567 – The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft; read by Martin Reyto (for Legamus.eu). This is an unabridged reading of the short story (30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Maissa Bessada, Terrence Blake and Julie Hoverson.

Talked about on today’s podcast:

XVI. The Window

The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,

One later day I brought the masons there

David Lindsay’s Voyage To Arcturus, an inner journey, Music Of Erich Zann, Julie’s Lovecraft Five audio dramas are now out in Germany, full of morphine charm and comfortable goose, archetypes, Arthur Jermyn, backstory, The Dunwich Horror is all backstory, C. Auguste Dupin, The Picture In The House, the way it is told is different, at least that’s what I told the police, The Haunter Of The Dark, From Beyond, The Shunned House, a vampire’s elbow, beautiful dead women vs. architecture, a library of an ancient family, is my line cursed?,

The House

‘Tis a grove-circled dwelling

In the gardens are growing

The rank grasses are waving

It was in the hot Junetime

Lovecraft sees a house, The Lurking Fear, the grass is strangely over-nourished, drawing the conversation, what does this evoke in us?, appreciating what’s going on, you’re seeing things better, a different myth cycle, connections between The White Ape and The Picture In The House, what this evolution stuff, the narcissistic wound, we thought we were god’s chosen turns out , a white man in somebody’s basement getting your revenge every 32 years, it seems a rudimentary story, no cosmic or metaphysical element, there’s something about the end, You fool! Warren is dead!, recognize the will, Arthur Schopenhauer, the only way out is to deny the will, he’s a bad alchemist, the eternal return of killing, he’s made a metaphysical mistake, not everyone really lives, The Cask Of Amontillado, you who know me so well, his confessor, Fortunado, I got away with it, why are we being told this story, is he living in an old folks’ home, The Name Of The Rose by Umberto Eco, renewing an old horror?, The Beast In The Cave, The Lurking Fear, became a C.H.U.D., whatchoo gonna do about it son?, so many thing unsaid, Marissa couldn’t stop thinking about it, he has a dragonface, from its machicolated parapet, stones or boiling oil, mounted battlements, worm eaten wainscots, that’s what he does with his time, he explores the ruins, called to the land beyond, the only human creature, cobwebs in profusion, untenanted gloom, dream holiday, bat and alchemist guano, he’s down there sciencing, the kid was fine, Lovecraft’s interest in witches, a political or social charge, sorcery in Saudi Arabia, Russia’s interfering in our elections (with magical ads on Facebook), Russian stooges, the old fashioned way, back to the children being killed, Gilles de Rais, The Unnameable, Mr Jim Moon, Cotton Mather, at the southward there was a Beast, this fellow was hereupon examined, infamous, they tortured him, the eye thing, he’s reading all these old books, he is that guy in the tower, his house is collapsing, he achieved his immortality, Malleus Maleficarum, vanishing testicles, he spent his whole childhood in a castle reading books.

Posted by Jesse Willis