Episode Details

The SFFaudio Podcast #805 – Lucian’s True History by Lucian of Samosata, read by Terry Kroenung, translated by Francis Hicks. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 22 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
True History, A True History by a long dead guy, this is science fiction, not very effectively, “the first known text that could be called science fiction”, histories of science fiction, deep roots, little conversation, Frederik Pohl book, niche interest, mainstream?, a lot more like Star Wars than Star Trek, a social science fiction, it’s something, modern readers from the 1600s on consider him an atheist, monotheistic religions at all, he believed in truth and common sense, the molecular theory of matter is hilarious (but also possibly true), making fun of all those people, his mode was irony, dripping with it, planets and stars, wouldn’t it be funny, could this fit into Planet Stories (no), no Mars, we go to Venus, we go to the Sun, the Moon, the translation is wrong, Lucifer, the light bringer, we went to the morning star, that’s Venus, thinking they’re two separate stars, a journey through the solar system, inside a whale, the land of dreams, the afterlife, a journey into other places (besides space), where do we get the title from, A True Story, it should have true in it, it’s all lies, it’s about truth, this place like Hell, Odysseus goes to Hell too, Hades, the plot is a greatest hits of silly ideas, Gulliver’s Travels is more science fiction than this, philosophers rather than scientists, Jonathan’s point, Philosophers going cheap, ironically poor manner, the punchline for each one, to perform manual labour, you can clean my floors, mythology too, a poor view of mythology, people who believed it were just idiots, Xenophones, reviving the pagan tradition, the 2nd century, 3rd century Platonism, critical of this, a lot of Christians don’t think about the story because they didn’t read the book, a reference to Genesis, all new to them, a participant in a religion with no one fixed text, this is not a straight up history, this is a parable (as mentioned in the actual story), the more you drill down into it, they weren’t there, I heard this from a dude, this is hilarious, one of the most popular writers of his time, survived all of the fires, made by hand, what’s the technology of reading, [Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage], a scene in I, Claudius, manuscripts copied, they all want it and we can sell it, a roomful of copyists, The Aeneid, state sponsored, collectors, the ancient world, books we know exist, excerpts, a checklist, ancient Greek/Roman culture, lost to us, this is how we know about them, the amount of material lost, Menopus, jokes then reconstructed, people who were dead showed up, get this joke out, are you sure you wrote that joke?, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, new at the time, every joke is a joke from the stone age, the same body parts [until the early 21s century], boobs, screwing, special stuff, trying to keep track of how many men he started off with and how many came back with, lose two guys to vine ladies, vaguely paid attention, start subtracting after a certain point, straight narrative, on his way home, jump back in time, by the time he gets home at the end of the chronological narrative, mostly they’re dead, for the messaging if there is any, trynna be pretty funny, houseguests: how to be one, how to not end up as one, the Calypso letter, about lies, why you gotta avoid lying, the opening introduction material, The Pathological Liar