Episode Details

The SFFaudio Podcast #877 – John Jones’s Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler (29 minutes) read by Brian Dirkx for LibriVox and When The World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle (1 hour 2 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for Librivox, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Scott Danielson.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Black Cat, Amazing Stories, with Amazing art, serialized in Liberty Feb 23 and March 3, in The Strand, Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World, rotundness and anger, Malone, stands tall, The Disintegration Machine, The Land Of The Mists, contact the dead?, spiritualism, finding dinosaurs, Alien Voices, Leonard Nimoy and John De Lancie, The Invisible Man, Wells and Verne, everybody knows Conan Doyle for Sherlock Holmes, a 1000 steps down, serial characters, not as popular as Sherlock Holmes, the shadow, full colour illustrated, the worst Challenger story, the premise, the story was filled with details about digging, from a weird perspective, a 10 page story, hears about someone else’s invention, he makes a bet that dinosaurs still exist, Around The World In 80 Days, he is the central character of this story, the idea is much stronger than the story, the fun part about it, The Poison Belt, a gas that’s gonna kill the planet, doomsday, delay the inevitable, oxygen cylinders delivered, his wife, an asshole to everybody except for her, she’s really nice, we have a mat and a something else, clean your boots very thoroughly, respecting his wife’s domain, survive it, they go outside and everything is dead but they’ve survived, dead people everywhere, they all were just in a coma, they’re just tall tales, the way Superman stories work, the problem with X-Files is the continuity, that should really change the world, he drills into the brain of the earth, it spouts up a geyser of stink, shakes the whole planet, these are science fiction tall tales, Conan Doyle’s odd beliefs, the fairies and the spiritualism, you hear things about people, the accepted narrative, the article about fairies, doing that for a lark, you can say things facetiously, take it out of context you can be misquoted, how Sherlock Holmes works, The Sussex Vampire, its a more mundane gothic reveal, there’s no supernatural in Sherlock Holmes, after WWI, we might have been misled on that, his biographers, people had a hate on for Orson Scott Card, never noticed him being a raging asshole, a slight difference of opinion, we’re allowed to have slightly different opinions about things, I really like roses, zinnias are much better, in the context of Houdini, Houdini vs. Conan Doyle, they were friends, debate over dinner, celebrities of the period, Lovecraft and Houdini, ghost wrote for Houdini, The Cancer Of Superstition, purchased by some collector, if it ever comes out, a big round fun character, they’re told from different perspectives, prescient, people in little squares, every zoom call, one of the students was tardy, really cool, we invest $1, destroy capitalism, the Fabian socialists win, could have been 10 minutes, a very small idea, March 21, 1988, you left 17 pounds fifty pence, hoarded it for 3 millions, you and Norweb, 180 billion pounds, April fools, Red Dwarf, a joke inspired by this story, the compound interest story, own everybody’s wealth, doubling your money, 3%, far enough into the future, what we’re told about bank, is that how your bank account works?, you go into cold sleep for 40 generations, do you expcet the money will be there just as promised, the institution, they’re managing your wealth, this fee and that fee, for the privileged, 2 stories, the first sentence or so, they’re both tall tales, told stories, how to get a job, economy and education, wait a second, the people saying it were complete