Episode Details

The SFFaudio Podcast #703 – Call Him Nemesis by Donald E. Westlake; read by Chris Pyle

This unabridged reading of the story (54 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of If, September 1961, programmatical problem, H.L. Gold, art, a juvenile delinquent rumble scene, early 50s, a strange story, a juvenile like Heinlein, so much Westlake in it, advanced stuff, the man with the handkerchief mask, the perfect stranger, Miss English, the girls in the gilded teller cages, dozing, savings account (again), the bank robbers are exactly the same, triplets, little Eddy, that kid from the bank, a transitive property in the writing, what makes the story longer than it probably should be, one of the cops doesn’t get it, why (maybe) it was better for Donald Westlake to leave science fiction, essentially science fiction, except for the fantasy element, The Scorpion!, a comic book superhero origin story, J. Jonah Jameson’s pov, a super-hero’s early exploits, Batman (1989), a scientific investigation, curlicues, letters to the newspapers, kid language, warn the citizens, bad doer’s begone, your printer informs on you, sending messages to IBM, sneakily (and sincerely), your printer, the editorial introduction, we never get the word nemesis in the story, a vigilante story, Westlake plays fair, Stephen King ten times, Stephen King was heavily influenced by this man, George Stark in The Dark Half, Richard Bachman, he probably read this story, Carrie, Firestarter, nobody noticed that in all these years, imposing control, Charlie McGee, psychic potty training, serve us, education, a maturation, a better story than this, he’ll grow out of it, he will beleive he has lost his power, too much into this idea, jumping to the supernatural, super-science, very 50s, more fantastic than Galaxy, Fantastic, genre conventions, what genre something is, where’s Francis Stevens, William Hope Hodgson, more fruitless, SFFaudio.com, what to call it, far out of genre, if you fix your criteria, interesting cases, Spider-Man is not a science fiction story it’s a super-science story, the origin vs. focus, Francis Steven’s 1904 super-hero story, he even gets a super-hero story, no swords, no magic, worrying about the category is important, a science fiction story, a star or a planet named Nemesis, New York, juvenile delinquent gangs, Westlakeisms, whatever Stephen King genre is, a very broad thing called fantasy, dragons and wizards and swords, the characters are having a genre struggle, genre savvy, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, wrong genre savvy, hard SF does not work down here, it had been fantasy from the beginning, migrating through genres, the frosted window, Scorp old boy, Tonto, Kemosabe, radioactive scorpion?, the issue with super-hero stories, the opening promise, superhero origin stories, Batman learns kung-fu, now I’m Spider-Man, a promise and no delivery on that promise, the 50 best fantasy books of all time, an Esquire article, nice list, thanks, is that all we have for this story?, surprised by what the story was, pyrokinesis, fun reading, fluffy and frothy, all surface and no tension, teams up with police, a Halloween costume, his powers don’t match that of a scorpion, change your name, Invincible, an amusing problem, what do I call myself, a weird strange deep dive, M