SFUltra

Brainwashing myself into loving science fiction, one book at a time.

SFULTRA #37 - Red Hook Variations

Main works discussed: The Horror at Red Hook - H. P. Lovecraft The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle The Courtyard - Alan Moore Neonomicon - Alan Moore Providence - Alan Moore "So you think you know what terror is As it stares from the newspaper page Yeah of course you all know what horror is It's the rage of the age Well, intimidation doesn't have a focus It oozes from every pore Murder doesn't bother to whisper In this fucking town it roars" - The Badge Means You Suck, AK-47 "Old time, something come back again If you have a start, then you must have an end None of them ever could've test with the pen My pen's the equivalent to the leng" - Bad Like We, Wiley Featuring a guest appearance by non-euclidian, cacodaemoniacal podcast entity and academic Cameron Kunzleman, author of the recently published Everything Is Permitted and cohost of many podcasts on the Ranged Touch network including Just King Things and Shelved By Genre.  Interlude by the great Evil Sword. patreon.com/sfultra

11-21
02:44:58

SFULTRA #36 - Vurt - Jeff Noon

"Tell me what you know about a man's affliction PC plod talk pure science fiction" - Cowboy Dave, Happy Mondays

09-28
01:07:35

Right Where You Are Sitting Now #2 - Routine Excercise

"You can't have feelings alone" - William Burroughs, Naked Lunch

07-25
06:27:22

Right Where You Are Sitting Now #1 - My Past, Like A Terrible River

Works covered: And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks Junky: The Definitve Text Of Junk Queer Yage Redux

07-05
03:43:46

SFULTRA #35 - Beasts - John Crowley

"The elementary unit of language — the statement — is the order-word. Rather than common sense, a faculty for the centralization of information, we must define an abominable faculty consisting in emitting, receiving, and transmitting order-words. Language is made not to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience...Words are not tools, but we give children language, pens, and notebooks as we give workers shovels and pickaxes. A rule of grammar is a power marker before it is a syntactical marker. The order does not refer to prior significations or to a prior organization of distinctive units. Quite the opposite. Information is only the strict minimum necessary for the emission, transmission, and observation of orders as commands...Language is not life; it gives life orders. Life does not speak; it listens and waits." - A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze Felix Guattari I'm happy to welcome the Booktube's best critic and only tasteful video editor Matt Bookpilled back on the show. Matt's channel is one of the main inspirations behind SFUltra and his engaging, thoughtful approach to reading means his patreon is worth it and then some. Matt's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Bookpilled  Matt's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Bookpilled

06-13
01:20:04

The Black Pool with Tim MacGabhann

To celebrate the release of his memoir The Black Pool on May 22nd, I spent 2 hours boring my close friend Tim MacGabhann into unconsciousness. Book launch details: 6pm, May 22nd in Hodges Figgis Dublin. Click here to read an extract that became the opening chapter: https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-black-pool/ Link to preorder or buy The Black Pool: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Black-Pool-by-Tim-MacGabhann/9781399728232

05-19
02:03:04

SFULTRA #34 - Holy Lacrimony - Michael DeForge

"You get under my skin I don't find it irritating, You always play to win but I won't need rehabilitating  oh no" - Another Girl Another Planet, The Only Ones

05-08
01:28:56

DUBLIN EVENT MAY 10th - Barbaric Genius Extended Cut Screening/ Director Q+A/ Vsevolod Plotkin Noise Set

Full details of the event are here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/event-dublin-may-127442825

04-26
10:16

Deep Territory #12 - Front Toward Enemy

"Thank god skin-patch is nearly gone And the impress of fingers dead Have disappeared and left me alone That one night I did not put jackboots on Don't want to end Reflection It's still there, though I am gone" - The Fall, Bremen Nacht

04-04
02:14:20

Deep Territory #9 - Lanark - Alasdair Gray

"My friends, you should not live like this." - Chekhov, when asked what his plays were supposed to convey. "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." - II Corinthians, 5:1 NKJV

03-01
06:36:39

Deep Territory #8 - The Erstwhile - Brian Catling

'Blake is always unexpected. If you think you know all the works, you're wrong. There's always something that comes up; if it's not a new work, then an old work will appear in a different kind of way. There are certain works I'm completely obsessed by and I don't know how he made them. I don't know how he made them at that time because there's nothing like them: they're completely original. I think his thing was originality.' - Brian Catling

02-08
01:27:40

Deep Territory #5 - Crash - J.G. Ballard

"So many great books have drowned in respect" - Iain Sinclair, Crash "Vaughn never been a duck-and-diver He spit on the mic, yuck, saliva Hold it like a truck driver hold a CB on a sharp turn Still clutchin' his chest from the heartburn…" - Viktor Vaughn, Saliva "Into the thundering cannon and into the murdering gun" - William Blake, Jerusalem

12-27
05:15:42

Deep Territory #4 - Passion Of New Eve - Angela Carter

"And in Hell beneath & a mighty & awful change threatend the Earth. The American War began. All its dark horrors passed before my face..." - William Blake, Letter to John Flaxman September 12 1800 I'm joined on this episode by fellow Live At The Death Factory host and writer Astrid Rose, whose work you can find here: https://astridannerose.gumroad.com/

12-19
03:01:42

Deep Territory #2 - The Vorrh - B Catling

"...writing could provide me with the means of so radically outwitting myself that I could bring my hidden experiences, my unadmitted self into view." - Raymond Roussel

11-29
02:34:44

SFULTRA #33 - UXA.GOV - Blake Butler

"The Stumbling Block is an ark of extinction. A bouillon hive of the murdered past, frozen dry to a mass. Something has warmed its corner, the oxoed grit bleeds a vein of contagion, virulent in its passion to embrace and swim in human tides" - Brian Catling, The Stumbling Block

11-14
01:27:21

SFULTRA #32 - The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien

"Cough up a pointless lecture Does it matter? Vomit me more conjecture Doesn't matter Argue till your left brain dies Does it matter? Presume to abuse my time Doesn't matter Let me paint a perfect picture Let it read like a holy scripture The words that leave my mouth Are just words you can live without Found community a struggle for me It's a collision: clash and grieve Nonsense screws and breeds Thoughts untethered went lost at sea" - Touché Amore, Circa 95

10-26
01:52:22

SFULTRA #31 - The Cipher - Kathe Koja

"...okay, that's life, that's what I was told anyway And picking your feet till they bleed may be the half of it If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle Maybe every fourth person is a dumb fuck Listen, listen carefully now: here's the answer It rhymes with axe Why it's those personal acts, of course Those personal acts Those suicide pacts Those carelessly stored razorblades in the hands of small children It's my face smeared on the pavement It's Everyday It's Everyday" - Everyday I Start To Ooze, Nomeansno

10-10
53:24

SFULTRA #30 - Rammellzee - Racing For Thunder

"BE WHO YOU ARE, WRECK THEM, AND THEN DIE" - Rammellzee

09-26
01:18:56

Explanatory Collapse #20 - On The Beach: Empty Space

"There are no castles without ghosts And no spirits without hope But nobody passes the test of time I do not fear the buried sounds Of words that echo underground A memory is a loaded gun And I remember everyone I remember everyone I remember you" - Ghosts, Nomeansno

09-09
02:07:56

Explanatory Collapse #19 - On The Beach: Nova Swing

"For every detective novel, regardless of its story, is for every reader, above all, a novel about himself: about what happened to the reader as a human individual in general, as an individual developing from a child into an adult; as a living being who experiences continuous transitions there and back, from layer to layer of consciousness..." - On The Detective Story, Sergei Eisenstein

09-02
01:56:36

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