Podcast Episode Details

The SFFaudio Podcast #852 - AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster and The Rat Racket by David H. Keller

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Episode 852

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The SFFaudio Podcast #852 – The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster (2 hours 1 minute) read by Gregg Margarite and The Rat Racket by David H. Keller (35 minutes) read by Robert Griffin. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
Terry’s back!, The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster and The Rat Racket by David H. Keller, longer than it needs to be, judge the two stories, science fiction, crappy science fiction, neither was terrible, as you should, a paradox, looks like what Terry considers to be the formula for science fiction, take an idea and literalize it, physicalize it, resymbolize at the end to draw a moral, The Pied Piper Of Hamelin, a mob or racketing technique, psychological phenomena, Gaia striking back, very similar, one comes across as a science fiction story, in Weird Tales, weird fiction, Keller is more of a science fiction guy, Amazing Stories, 1931, the fantasy domain, the very last sentence, all he wanted to do was get rid of the rats, he’s a cat!, whenever I talk about it my voice becomes squeaky, the science fiction mode, the setting, contemporary setting, menace to society, non-Anglo Saxon force, urban science fantasy, genius for hitting at vital spots, in the context of Scott Miller’s recording, racketeering, if you look at it closely, doesn’t seem to, The Minions Of Midas by Jack London, bought the premise from Sinclair Lewis, perhaps they’re all the same premise, outside threatening force threatens capitalists, letters slipped to a local billionaire, those who are sending the messages, kill some unrelated person, find some blacksmith, until he pays the money, we never meet The Minions Of Midas, this is necessary in this period of time, a certain amount of capital, require $20 million dollars, redistribute the wealth, resolves itself, he’s tackling essentially the same problem, racketeering was a real thing, the technology is cities and telegrams and being anonymous, email is incredibly anonymous, never not monitored, free email accounts, a cybercafe, a burner yahoo email, telegrams vs. emails, Jack London’s point is much more amazing, what if that Pied Piper story was real, takes a long time in their setup, we like Murgatroyd and coffee, the mystery that’s going on, a little boring, it doesn’t need to be that long, the setup at the end is pretty stupid, the comeuppance, James Bond, A View To A Kill, the son of genetic engineering, blow up silicon valley, microchip company’s profits, falls out of the sky, the Med Ship story, a problem of the week story, symbolically it’s very interesting, the doctor running the planet, the chief minister of the planet, Dr Lett, a bloodletting, just let it happen, he deserves a presidential pardon, the solution, getting some woodsmoke in their lungs, sounds stupid, maybe this is a lot smarter, the ecosystem setup, no reliable native life forms, humans expanding forever, Malthusianism, we can expand forever into infinite galaxies, rats have been known to do that, Malthus, rats and rabbits multiplying past endurance, other molecules, don’t feel ripped off, not a make work project, the Amish, they’re farmy, cheap farmland, a story about Mennonites, met Mennonites, a bigger diaspora of them, all about vertical integration, repairable by themselves, they can fix carts, a religious prohibition, don’t buy phones from Apple, an interesting sentence, Hutterite children, protected from asthma, an associated citation, more in contact with farm animals as a child, associated theories, being too sterile, handwashing using alcohol with perfume, hand sanitizer, more likely to get warts, other problems, dry skin, a similar contention with lip balm, lip balm scientists, balm is me

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Published on 4 weeks ago