The SFFaudio Podcast #863 – The Messiah Of The Cylinder by Victor Rousseau, (8 hours 3 minutes) read by Brian Fullen for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Will Emmons,

Talked about on today’s show:

Everybody’s Magazine, June – September 1917, a book, 2 years later The Apostle Of The Cylinder, who is the messiah?, 3 cylinders, our protagonist, a prophecy, who made the prophecy, serious problems with this book (it being good), intersting stuff in it, describing it to Eric [S. Rabkin], Brave New World, We, 1984, before those books, a response to When The Sleeper Awakes, The Sleeper Wakes, being a good book, The Marching Morons [by C.M. Kornbluth], transported into the future, finds the world different, in London, a chamber, a tube, his riff on that book, 18 years earlier, bad internet, request times out, messianic element, events happening, a tour of the place, this internet sucks, changed bands, except for us, media, a culture of lack of reading, a lot of speakers, mechanical or electric speakers transmitting ads and propaganda at all times in public places, vivisection, pushing a Christian ending, a one way response to Wells, a line in here, The World Set Free, an American magazine, set in London, set in 1917, written before WWI started, no revision in that serial publication, what part of 1917 were the czars wiped off the map, two 1917 revolutions, provisional government, old calendar, October Revolution in November, the socialist one, three months after, a strange book, it instantly gets things wrong, wrong before it starts, immediately outdated, the Russia stuff, most illiberal, the most rigid, no revolutions that stuck, terror attacks on government officials, a bulwark of stability, housing reform, if you give a mouse a cookie he’s gonna want democracy, eugenics, hate/annoyed by, what makes the book less good, future proof, in the same drawer as Brave New World, This Perfect Day, the protagonist and his romance with a lady, pining gets in the way, more of a generic story, not a science fiction magazine, a scientific romance, Wells doesn’t try to have sympathetic characters, our hero is supposed to be a good guy, duped into the tube, traits, he has no valuable traits, a rousing speech, the holy spirit takes him, The Time Machine, what do we know about the main character, wife or girlfriend, maybe he’s a time lord, meets Weena, not exactly a romance, finding the flower in his pocket, getting to the ideas, showing that sphinx, an ant on top of a pillar, innovative and responsive attack on Wells and pro-science, progress, fundamentally anti-enlightenment book, makes a list, innovative, reading an old book, what people were thinking about back then, this book is superinto eugenics as a thing, blues?, whites?, defectives and non-defectives, rewatching Rome (HBO series), Ivanhoe, brass plaques, slaves wore collars, I am the property of this person, I am a runaway slave, return me for a reward, airplane man, where’s your brass bro?, in the future people aren’t gonna be first name and last name, you’re going to be your social security number, they’re all fuckin slaves, less and more enslaved, the social movement going on in this book, the background, the years in the cylinder, by 1945, the explanation from how we got from 1914ish to 2015ish, were these real forces, if this goes on, eugenics was huge, just prior, eugenics programs, on the downlow, Christianity as a bulwark against eugenics, this force of holding back the horror, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, a horror, literally dogs barking in the vivisection chambers, live bodily into the future, we want Christianity, spiritual immortality, in tension, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, germ-plasm, lichy telepathic tissue, top-down horrible way, the priests aka the scientists running this stuff, these guys are corruptible, positive interesting stuff in it, not of the stature of Wells, still writing for girls and boys who want to fall in love, could have been really amazing, just interesting, structural problems, might not have chops, a response to Wells, the prophet, seething against Wells in this book, it is a book very much like Brave New World, what thr world building does, John Savage, the man from outside of society, from an Amish reserve, the old fashioned brutal way, no eugenics going on at all, fuck your mom, learn Shakespeare, hooked on drugs, baby making factory tour, Aldous Huxley, dystopia, a way to go, a much better book, 1984 has a romance in it, another subversion, another pulling away of the rug, escape, there’s a girl like me, she’s in the anti-sex league but is excited about sex, censorship business/hates censorship, she’s an op, carrying about her, Lazaroff, Samson, the Pole, on purpose, he’s not as good as those other guys, how programmatic it is, feelings about divorce, how divorce caused all this, a symptom, we have a choice, science priests or regular priests, not allowed to say he’s forgotten his name, takes on the title London, not corrupt, working honestly, major problem with religion, god’s existence, disprove a negative, interesting ideas in Christianity, a religion that worships power, becomes, glosses right over that, essays by Doris Lessing, pattern of medieval Christianity, totalizing regime, European history, accepting divorce, measuring people’s skulls, it used to be the province of a select few at the top, widespread, compared to what we got now, husband in the army, marriage is not the institution that it was, a Hollywood thing now, never been more expensive, life commitment expense vs. a lot of money, divorce is quick, dividing the house, if you don’t have stuff to divide, children, he’s pointing at something that’s real, liberalization of divorce laws, he’s anti-eugenics, even moreso than he is pro-Christianity, tamped down, these two laws, an ending, against socialism, mechanism for picking who the leaders are, hard to argue with him, he just tells you what it is, how this to relates to patterns in modern society, ancient Rome, a new Rome, striking, language changes, MAID, euthanasia, retiring room?, the rest cure, still bad, The Yellow Wallpaper, an insane asylum, the Doc Holiday disease, stinky smoky city, the rest cure is death, a threat, turn in your cash, other euphemisms, some of the mental defectives, some of them are the artists, an art factory, Andy Warhol, a good artist, I should put this on my wall, his Mao print, he’s terrible, a good person, a good artist, Virgil Finlay, Joseph Clement Coll, illustration, stageplay, poetry, fiction, a kind of art, visual art, sculpture, too much religious sculpture, comics are really cool, glutted on comics, what is he saying?, this is a dystopia, among other ways he’s saying it, the kind of artist in my dentist’s office, Thomas Kinkade, he’s the name associated with this style of art, he’s the factory master, make some money, way or reading it subversively, thinking about why is everything so shitty, too close to power, he’s a part of the political structure, regular proles, not his colleagues in the redaction factory, beer at the pub, don’t get involved in politics, policy changes, a new war, always at war with East Asia, Winston Smith, the only way of reading it subversively, going back to Rome, Mark Antony, Octavian, Ciero, Agrippa, characters from history, bad things happen to them, the reason all of this is happening, infighting, hidden political forces, Rome is glutted with slaves, back from Gaul, sending slaves back to the slave market in Rome, regular Romans can’t find work, discontented Rome, the populist candidate, free land, free grain, the forces against Julius Caesar, curry favour, the mob has a lot of power, automation, working on technology like ray guns, light planes, solar powered, electric planes?, cables for some things, storage for sunlight somehow, airplanes everywhere, airscouts, high class thing, airships, 1899, they look more like galleys with paddles, bird wings, a huge shift has come, automation and scientism and eugenics has radically changed the population, a lot of backstory, not super easy to follow, boring in parts, compare this to modern politics in Canada and the United States, Trump, on the side of scientism, Fauci, I am science, next booster, those people hate Trump, Brutus and Cassius and other conspirators kill Julius Caesar, the people backing him, back on team scientism, shifting alliances, don’t want to have a dictator for life, killed for the same reason people are trying to kill Trump, people they have contempt for, what’s going on in here, a trends and forces story hidden in here, my girlfriend back, decadent, the house of freedom, never been outside, Esther, girl from the second cylinder, she was into feminism, a suffragette, first wave feminism, suffragette proof cylinder, threw bombs, a disturbing force in the UK, it got rough, forced feedings, militant in the streets (not in a pussy hat way), Susan B. Anthony, very American version, dispensed with in the future, there’s nothing about it, they don’t want divorce either, largely about being equal to effect politics, his criticism of Wells, his criticism of democracy, a lot of sympathy for that, anarchy expect for these two laws, s a scientist and his beautiful daughter, guy writing cheques, over the coffee cups style dispute, love triangle, locked in a cylinder for 100 years, telegraphed, hoping it wouldn’t turn into a got a get my girl back, a pretty horrible book, very interesting, pretty terrible, points of view, needs Heinlein to step in, an old man argue with a young guy, this all happened as