 Good morning, everybody. Hi, it's Keith. It's Monday, June 7, 2021. One of these just chatting sci-fi live streams in a while and I'll do them often enough. It looks like somebody's watching on Twitch. I hope it's a person anyway. Yeah, I'm just gonna kill some time. If anybody comes in and we'll talk about science fiction, try to talk about science fiction. My hair here, even with my hair cut down to almost nothing, it's still a mess. You can see right through it, whatever. Now that we can, now that we're vaccinated and can get out of our houses and actually dine in at places, I've gone to the Starbucks here the last couple of mornings, right at 5 a.m. when they open. Nobody else is there. I'm not a Starbucks fan. I'm not a coffee guy. I drink hot tea when I go out there, but Starbucks is the only thing that's in walking distance of where I'm living right now. It's a half mile away. There's a Subway sandwich shop, too, and that's it. There's nothing else for walking distance. But I've gone near the last couple of mornings, had some hot tea, got a ham and egg sandwich, and done some short story reading. I finished the, this morning, I finished a funny little story called Providence by Paul de Filippo. Yeah, neat little post-human story. See, this book is from, see, all these stories are copyrighted in 2009, so this was probably published in 2010. It's the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 3 edited by George Mann. These short story collections always aggravate me because they don't put the year in the title. This one technically doesn't necessarily need it because it's not one of these best of the year things, but all these short story anthologies that call themselves best science fiction stories of the year, they never put the date in the title. They always say Volume 3 or Volume 14 or Volume 15, and you have to dig through the credits to find what you're the damn thing is from. Anyway, I read this thing by Paul de Filippo called Providence. Neat little story. Hi, who came in? You want to talk about science fiction? Whoever's there on YouTube? What are you reading? What have you watched recently? I saw some stuff on Netflix recently. I got myself a one month of Netflix, looked at a couple of things and then didn't renew it. That's the way I do Netflix. There's so much stuff on Netflix and all of it is stuff that I'm not interested in. There's 100,000 different things to see on Netflix and I'm not interested in any of it. Okay, whoever it was who came in just left. Bye. We're 10 minutes in, 10 or 11 minutes in. I haven't published any book reviews this year. There are reviews that I could publish. So what can I talk to myself about while there's nobody here and playing lots of Valheim? I haven't been playing Fortnite. In the last two or three years I've been talking about Fortnite, just constantly talking about Fortnite. I'm constantly playing Fortnite. I haven't played at all in a month, at least maybe two months. The latest season. I wasn't interested in the latest season. Well they're about to have a new season and it appears that it's going to be, the theme is going to be alien abduction. There are crop circles showing up on the island, players, random players are just running around the map shooting other players as they normally do or finding themselves caught in a beam of light that comes out of the sky and then they find themselves lifted into the air. Apparently they're going to be kangaroos in the game this next season. They're already wolves and wild pigs and velociraptors. Apparently there's going to be kangaroos. So what do you want to talk about? I mentioned Netflix. I got on Netflix because I wanted to see the Queen's Gambit and I did and I liked it. I was also somewhat interested in seeing Army of the Dead. That turned out to be really bad. I only got about halfway through it and turned it off. I have no interest in continuing. It's just a bad movie. People have such terrible taste. Why is that movie so popular? Last Saturday we had a really interesting episode of Bad Saturday Morning. From the early 1950s we watched the Pinky Lee show. If you don't know who Pinky Lee was looking up. And we watched Rudy Kazooie and also Winky Dink. They're very educational. We've had more than 40 episodes of Bad Saturday Morning. We're not even close to running out of material. Not even close. When it comes to the monthly double features, part of the reason I went from a movie every week to a double feature every month was because I'm running out of movies to show. Running out of movies that are number one available and number two that I'm interested in showing. But with Saturday Morning? No, there's no shortage. There's no shortage of junk. And that's why I started this new series, this throwback TV series because I want to show more TV shows. Who came in? Somebody's watching on YouTube. Hi, morning. Say hello, please. Even if you're not going to stick around, even if you're not interested in talking to me, please say hello. I never get viewers. It's always, it would always be nice if someone would just say hello. I think I'm wasting my breath. The last double feature we showed was Last Man on Earth and Nothing Sacred. Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price from 1964. Excuse me. And Nothing Sacred from 1937 with Carol Lombard. Both of them ended up being not great movies. Nothing Sacred started off really good. We were laughing out loud. Damien Rivas came in and says, new viewer here. Oh, hi. How did you find me? Why did you come here? I don't do these streams very often. I get very low numbers of views. There was a while last year when I was doing it once or twice a week and I started to get a small number of regulars who would come in, but I don't even get my regulars anymore because I just don't stream anymore. Someone else came in, too. I've got three people watching, two people on YouTube. But yeah, I've been doing book reviews on YouTube for 10 years. I haven't published any this year because of low viewership. I really don't have any motivation to do it. But yeah, that's what I'm going to talk about this morning, science fiction. What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you hearing about? I'm getting ready to move this set into the next room. I've been stuck in this cramped little space. For the past year. The next room over has a lot more room, but it's been full of junk this whole time. I'm getting ready to move this stuff over there. Damien says, a sci-fi fan, I found your review of the forever war. Okay. Yeah, that book has such a great reputation. I was a bit disappointed in it. It's a neat idea. I felt like it really didn't go anywhere. I didn't have much of an ending and I thought the premise was actually quite believable, but the ending wasn't. But it's been so long since I read it. I don't actually remember what the ending was. Were you looking for reviews of forever war? Is that what you were looking for? Have you read it yourself? Okay, I lost one of my YouTube viewers. That's why I asked you to say hello earlier. I get so, so few viewers. It's always frustrating to see, to see the numbers tick up telling me that someone came in and then they just leave. I think it's actually rude to do that. Come into somebody's live stream when they've got no viewers and don't don't even say hello. Just turn around and leave. If I had lots of viewers, it wouldn't make that much difference. Well, I hope you subscribe to the channel. I'm most active on the 50th Street Studio channel. I'll type that in the chat. Look for 50th Street Studio on YouTube and on Twitch. I stream there at least once a week, sometimes several times a week. Every Saturday morning I stream a show called Bad Saturday Morning, which is exactly what it sounds like. We show bad cartoons, bad kid shows. I have a co-host that does it with me. Damien says, yeah, I thought it was decent. The best bit was when Mandela visited Earth after the time jump. Yeah. Okay, I'm starting to remember now. Yeah. And, and he didn't know how to get by from day to day because society had changed so much. And his name was Mandela. I forgot his name was Mandela. Yeah, it was an interesting premise. I didn't think it, I didn't think he, I didn't think he did enough with it. I thought it was implausible that he and his, was it his wife or his girlfriend? I forget, it must have been his wife, that he and his wife would both end up surviving till the end of the universe or whatever. Not only both surviving, but then finding each other. I thought it's highly implausible. I found the, the concept of, of these people who are engaging in interstellar war on these generation ships, surviving for many, many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, because of all the interstellar space travel they're doing. I thought that was really interesting. I thought that was very plausible. But the idea of these two people, not only both surviving, but then finding each other, I didn't believe that at all. Damien says, interesting to seeing Dune this year. No. No, not at all. I had four viewers there for a second, and now I have only two. Two people came in. Oh, Owen came in. Hi, Owen. How you doing, Owen? You've been here before, right? Damien says, it's his wife. Yeah, see, I didn't find that believable at all. I think science fiction needs to have a believability to it. Because it's not, it's not fantasy. It's not, we're not talking about magic, magic and coincidence. But yeah, I'm talking with, they've got a new viewer here named Damien talking about Forever War, which I reviewed some years ago. Okay, yeah, we've got three viewers now. Oh, and you, I know you've been here. Your name looks familiar. Tell me how you found me originally and why you keep coming back. What brought you back? It's always good to know. And what do you want to talk about, Owen? Now that I've, now that I've had my vaccinations and I've started to, started to leave the house a bit, my throat is starting to get scratchy. I hope I don't start getting sick. I've been disease free, disease free and allergy during this whole lockdown. I haven't had one cold, not one flu, not one allergy attacks, the healthiest year of my life. But if I start getting sick as soon as I start going outside, God damn it. Damien says, what are your thoughts on the book Dune anyway, or the series overall at least? I've never read it. I've never read it. The number one question that I've been asked over the years, over the last 10 years, is not so much the question like a request, read Dune, review Dune, review Dune, you should read Dune. No, I'm not interested. And when I tell people know their responses, you've never heard of Dune? Of course I've heard of Dune. I know what it is. Frank Herbert, I saw the movie back in the 80s with Sting. And yeah, I've heard of Dune. I know what it is. I know what it's about. I'm not interested in reading it. I've read some of other Frank Herbert's work. I'm not impressed with the writing style. And also the book series is too damn popular. It's just so popular that I'm not interested. And the fact that people keep asking me to review it makes me not want to even more. That's the number one book that people wanted me to review. The others have been Lord of Light, which I have read and I hated. And the other one is Neuromancer, which I tried to read and couldn't. It's unreadable if you ask me. Yeah, Lord of Light was one of the worst things I've ever read. I didn't quite finish it, got real close to the end, like one chapter till the end. But no, I don't have any thoughts on Dune because I haven't read it. And I'm not interested in the new movie. That movie, that David Lynch movie from the 80s is not a good movie. Yeah, just not a good movie. I don't think anyone would argue that it's a good movie. Well, some people will of course. But I think most people understand that it's just not a good movie. But unlike Blade Runner, which everyone, which everyone is always raving about saying what a good movie it is, I didn't like Blade Runner. I thought it was bad. It's boring, just a boring movie. Damien says, yeah, the book series has a ton of Islamic stuff pulled from it. You mean Herbert was taking, you mean Herbert was using Islam as an example of his fictitious religion? Is that what you mean? Oops, they're drying out, they're sticking to each other. Owen's still here. Owen came in and said hello and didn't say anything else. I guess he followed my request and said hello, so I can't complain. Man, my teeth look bad. My teeth are bad. So who else is here? Is it still Owen? Damien says yes. Okay, I guess you're answering my question about Herbert was using Islam as a kind of a template for whatever. When I was a kid and the original Battlestar Galactica was on TV, people were always telling me that there was too much Mormonism in Battlestar Galactica, that it was very Mormon. I didn't really understand at the time. Looking back on it now, I'm like, yeah, the original Battlestar Galactica was 100% the Mormon church in space. Damien says there's about 70 uses of the term jihad in the book. Well, I don't know that the word jihad is necessarily Islamic. It's Arabic. Yeah, I grew up knowing what the word jihad meant because they used it in Star Trek. The original Star Trek, the animated series, there was an episode called the jihad. And they explained in that episode what the word meant. So I grew up knowing what the word jihad meant because of Star Trek. My first real experience with Star Trek was the animated series from 1973. So I have a soft spot for the animated series. Everybody hates Star Trek, the animated series, but I have a certain appreciation for it. The places where I grew up, there was usually nobody showing the original Star Trek in reruns, or if they were, it was at times when I couldn't see it. I think it was a local NBC station. We lived way out in the woods, way out in the middle of nowhere. Our local NBC station would show it at 1030 at night after the nightly news, which is too late for me to see it. Robert Plisken came in. He says, hey Keith, hi Robert. We're just talking about science fiction. What do you want to talk about? I've got three people watching on YouTube now. Damien Owen and Robert, I guess. Robert Plisken is a semi-regular hero. Say hello to Damien Rivas, who's a first-timer. He's talking about Dune, which I've not read. Damien says, never seen Star Trek all the way. I've only seen snippets of the original 60s. Yeah, some of the original 60s show, it depends on which ones you see. Some of the original series is just television art. I mean, just beautiful, amazing, great science fiction. But much of the original series is just awful. It depends on which ones you see. I'm really horrified by people, young people today, whose only exposure to Star Trek are the new J.J. Abrams movies. I'm like, oh my God. And there are so many people my age or a generation younger than me who are all about next generation. And I'm like, okay, I guess. But when I try to go back and watch next generation episodes, I can't do it. It doesn't mean anything to me. Robert says, what a coincidence. I'm currently reading a Dune book. One of the ones by Frank Herbert's son. How many Dune books are there? How many official Canon Dune books are there? Like 20, 25? And is Herbert's son any good at writing? Is he any good? There was the David Lynch movie from the 80s. There was this new Dune movie that's coming up. I've heard bad things about it, even though it's not even out yet. And wasn't there a miniseries on the sci-fi channel? Don't I remember there was a miniseries? A really expensive miniseries? 18. Okay, so I was exaggerating, but I was close. 18 books in the series. Damn. Is it going to be like a Wizard of Oz? I guess there's an official Frank Herbert estate that determines who gets to write Dune books. I assume that's the case, because that's the way they do things with their international Wizard of Oz club. They determine which Oz books are Canon, which is kind of silly to think of Oz books as being Canon or not. I read that one book. Actually, I didn't finish reading it. I don't think. That one Oz book by Philip Jose Farmer. And right from the beginning, it was obvious that he had never read the Oz books. He had started with, he had read the first Wizard of Oz book and read no further. And it was obvious immediately. And it was just bad. Robert says, Frank Herbert wrote six. His son and Kevin J. Anderson have written, I think, 15. Good Lord. The ones by his son aren't good, quote unquote, per se, but they're easy reading. Robert says, why do you not like next generation? I don't dislike it, but it doesn't it doesn't really mean much of anything to me. I know someone right now who's rewatching Hall of Star Trek from the beginning. She completed the, it's actually Becky M on YouTube, the other sci-fi book reviewer that I talk about. She comes in here sometimes. She watched the original series, had great fun doing that. She watched the animated series. She didn't enjoy that. Then she now she's watching the next generation and just loving it. And I'm like, yeah, there was a podcast I used to listen to where they did that same thing. They started with episode one of the original Star Trek. And they've been watching and reviewing everything. And once they started reviewing next generation, I completely lost interest in the podcast. I remember watching the first episode of next generation. And it was obviously two episodes that they had just smushed together. It looked like they had done it rather hastily as well. And I wasn't, I wasn't all that impressed. First season of next generation was really wonky. I remember liking some stuff from it in the later seasons. But I was never, I was never a great fan of it. I remember finding Deep Space Nine. I almost said Babylon 5. I almost call it Babylon 5. I remember thinking that Deep Space Nine was really interesting at the beginning. Because it was a very different kind of Star Trek. But it was still in the same universe. The idea that there was this civil war going on on this alien planet, I liked that. And I like the fact that it was more, it was more of an episodic soap opera. I liked that. I didn't continue to watch the show. But yeah, next generation just never, never jazzed me that much. I do have to say though, when I first saw the new Enterprise, the the NCC1701D from next generation, I liked it immediately. I immediately liked the way it looked. I do have to say that. I always thought it was kind of silly that the the bridge of the of the Enterprise in next generation looked like somebody's living room. Everybody was lounging around on couches. Robert says, one thing I've always thought about Star Trek is that the original series characters are strong archetypes. A casual viewer like me can jump into any episode and instantly know the relationships. Right. Yeah, that's what I was getting at when I said that Deep Space Nine was a different kind of show. It was more of a, that's what I meant when I said it was more of a soap opera. You couldn't just jump in and know what was going on. If you missed episodes, you didn't know who you were watching or what they were doing. But yeah, you're right. The original series was designed to be that way. And you can watch the original series movies without seeing the show. The same isn't true for the next generation. Yeah, I guess I never saw any of the next generation movies. Had no interest in them at all. The Star Trek movies got to be so bad. I remember liking the first Star Trek movie, the motion picture. I remember liking that when it first came out. And I've always loved Wrath of Khan. I've always loved Wrath of Khan. I didn't like Star Trek III, the search for Spock. I didn't like that one at all. I kind of liked Star Trek IV, the voyage home along with the Save the Whales. I kind of like that back in the day when it first came out. Every movie since then, I've had no interest in. They mean so speaking of shows I do watch and like, I've seen Battlestar Galactica, the remake one at least. I watched the first episode of that and didn't like it. When I saw that, as soon as I saw that they changed the Cylons so that the Cylons look human and pass for human and that the Cylons had infiltrated humanity. As soon as I saw that, I was like, no, not interested. That's not the premise of the original Battlestar Galactica at all. And after that, I would hear people talk about what was going on with this new Battlestar Galactica and people would try to describe it to me and I would be like, what the hell are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense and they would be like, yeah, you're right, it doesn't make any sense. The original series wasn't great, but it was, there was a certain amount of fun to it because it was well made science fiction, well made space opera, which was rare. It was so rare back in the day, back in the 70s. We were starved for good science fiction back then. Harvard says, honestly, I like Wrath of Khan, but it's always felt a little stiff and self-conscious. Really? Wrath of Khan felt stiff to you compared to the first movie, the motion picture? Talk about stiff. Wrath of Khan is just great from beginning to end, if you ask me. It's just tremendous. I get really frustrated with people who say that they don't like Wrath of Khan because it's not Star Trek, so it's not a Star Trek movie. Shut up. It's a great movie. Yeah, it sort of felt stiff and self-conscious. That's interesting. That's interesting. I love the costumes. I really loved, I love the fact that they made the costumes more military, more formal and more military for Star Trek II because in the first movie, they were just wearing pajamas. And in the original series, they were dressed too casual as well. People forget that this is a military ship. The Federation is a military organization. Harvard says the motion picture was my intro to Star Trek, so I'll always respect it for that. That's a hell of an intro to Star Trek. That movie is, it depends a lot on being familiar with the characters because so much of the film, I mean at least half of the film was devoted entirely to the characters seeing each other again for the first time after 20 years or whatever. Damien says Wrath of Khan has the best meme of the entire series with Khan. Yeah. Robert says, I know some Star Trek fans dislike the traditional naval feel of Wrath of Khan. Now see, I was, yeah, as I was just saying, I did like the fact that it became more, more military because in watching the original series, I always feel like that's missing. That's something that's missing from that show. They're just wearing sweaters. Especially in the first season, they're wearing sweaters that don't even fit. They're swimming in these huge, shiny velour sweaters. And I always, I always felt that that was something that was seriously missing. And in the second movie in Wrath of Khan, they got that right for a change. Yeah, well, I had another viewer there for a brief, a brief moment. Once again, somebody coming in and leaving. Well, what else do you want to talk about? Before you guys came in, I was talking to myself just killing time. I was saying that I, now that I can leave the house and go and walk down the street and sit at a cafe and read. As I've done this, I've read this a couple of times this week, the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 3 from 2009 or 2010. And just this morning, I finished a little story called Providence by Paul de Philippo. Just a cute little post-human story about robots living in a post-human world. Robert says, I finished Childhood's End recently. That's a, that's a trippy book. Robert says, Ricardo Montabon is amazing. I must admit, you know what? I learned something that I never heard before about Ricardo Montabon in Wrath of Khan. He, I knew that he had, he had suffered a serious back injury in a horse riding incident. He fell off a horse and injured his back very badly. I didn't realize that that happened before Wrath of Khan. And he was actually in a walker. He was using a walker during Wrath of Khan. Go back and watch that movie again. You'll notice that you never see him below the waist ever in that movie. I never noticed that before until, until I read that. That, that tremendous chest, that tremendous muscle bound chest and the shoulders and biceps of his are real. Because he was working out like crazy for rehabilitation. But you never see his legs, you never see his hips. If you do, he'll be sitting. Like, but I don't remember seeing him. Robert says, very good novel. He's talking about Childhood's End. Very good novel, but I agree with your review where you said the characters act too rationally as if they were all Arthur C. Clarke. Right. Arthur C. Clarke does that. Every character in his books just talks and acts like Arthur C. Clarke. And there's no women in his books. There's almost no women. Damien is asking, worst sci-fi writer you have the displeasure to read. Yeah, Robert is saying I never noticed that. Yeah, look at the movie again. And you'll notice you never see his legs. You never see him below the waist ever. It's amazing. Yeah, he put on a hell of a performance for that movie. Damien, the worst sci-fi writer I've had the displeasure to read. Usually, usually I don't read authors that I don't like because as soon as I start to read their stuff and see that I don't like their writing, I just put the book down. I don't force my way through bad books. But I have real problems with, I mentioned it earlier, Lord of Light, the author, Zalazny. Roger Zalazny. I cannot read Roger Zalazny's writing. I can't read it. It's incoherent to me. Lord of Light was unbearable and I pushed my way through it almost all the way to the end. And I hated every minute of it. I've tried to read a number of his other things in the past. And as soon as I start reading them, I'm like, this, this makes, this is, it's like, it's like nails on a chalkboard trying to read Zalazny. I can't tell you what the problem is. I couldn't tell you. Ironically, I do like Damn Nation Alley. I like Damn Nation Alley a lot. I've read it more than once. That's by Zalazny. And he wrote at the same time he was writing Lord of Light. And I've read him, and I've read quotes where he says that he was deliberately writing Lord of Light in an experimental style. So I have to give props to him for, I mean, any writer who can change his writing style and pull it off, much less make a success, a successful popular book out of it. You have to give props to him. Damien says mine is Elron Hubbard. The first 20 pages of Battlefield Earth. I can imagine that's probably bad. Pliskin says honestly, it's just like Heinlein quite a bit, but I think it's, but I think I've read the wrong books. I've tried his later, later books, which are very self-indulged. His later books are not good. Yeah, his later books are not good, like The Cat Who Walks the Walls. Is that the name of one of his books? I tried to read that I couldn't. His earlier stuff is much simpler and much more enjoyable. A lot of his earlier books were, they're called juveniles. They were written for, today we would call them YA or young adult. I would recommend reading Orphans of the Sky. I read that one when I was like in fifth grade. I found it at my school library and I loved it then and I still love it. Robert says I got halfway through Battlefield Earth. I read, there's an Elron Hubbard book I read that I liked. I read it many years ago. It's called Fear. It's just the title of the book is just fear. And I really liked it. I've never read anything else by him and I'm not going to. But I just happened to read this, this one thing. Actually it was an audio book. I listened to it on an audio book during a long drive. I probably listened to it because it was just what was available on whatever shelf I got it off of in a truck stop or something. I don't remember, but it was read by Roddy McDowell which made it very entertaining. And I liked it a lot. It's a standalone book. It's not part of any series or anything. We had five people viewing there for a second. We've got four now. Who came in? Is somebody else watching on YouTube? Yeah, Ladder Day Heinlein is bad. Robert says I think Stephen King said he liked Fear. I believe that. I believe that. I can't really talk about the book without spoiling it. It was, the premise of the book was so interesting. I spent a long time now. As a matter of fact, I've read a Stephen King story that was a lot like Fear. I'm thinking about it. I think it was a Stephen King story. Or maybe it was Fear. Or maybe it is Fear I'm thinking of. No. No, it was Stephen King. Wait a minute. Whatever. Damien says I like Moon as a Harsh Mistress for Heinlein, which has the best AI in fiction and most realistic for me. I haven't read that. Moon as a Harsh Mistress. I tried to read Double Star and gave up on it. It's a Heinlein book. It's not much of a science fiction premise. It's about a guy who's acting as a body double for a politician or something. It wasn't interesting. There's another author. I can't stand E&M Banks. I've tried a few times to start reading books of his and I can't. I have the same reaction I have to Zalazny. Just grating. Can't, can't read it. Robert says I will say I like Starship Troopers already. Starship Troopers is an unusual book. It's written in the form of a journal. Yeah, it's very unusual and it's very short. He actually wrote that. He wrote that book in the middle of writing Stranger in a Strange Land. I have a lot of opinions about Stranger in a Strange Land. I've never reviewed it on my channel, but I've talked about it on these live streams. He was writing Stranger in a Strange Land and then he stopped. And the reason he wrote Starship Troopers is because he was furious about the anti-war protests that were going on in the 60s, the anti-Vietnam War protests. He was that kind of guy who was super conservative, super Republican, pro-war all the way. He was furious about all these hippies protesting the war. So he stopped writing Stranger in a Strange Land and wrote Starship Troopers. And then he went back to writing Stranger in a Strange Land. And Stranger in a Strange Land reads like two different books because of it. But I can show you, I can show you the exact point where Stranger in a Strange Land turns into a bad book. The first two-thirds of Stranger in a Strange Land are the best book I've ever read. The last third is the worst book I've ever read. It changes, it turns on a dime. I can show you the exact page where it changes. I'd need a copy of the book though. Damien says E&M Banks books are very dense. It's hard to understand at times. Yeah, I started reading the, what is it, what is the series called? The Culture Books? Is that what they're called? The Culture Books? I started reading one of those called The Gainesmen or The Gainesmaster or something. And this character, right from the beginning, this character who's the protagonist of the story, was so hateful. He was so hateful and unlikable. And I didn't like the premise. I thought the premise was, I didn't buy it. I wasn't accepting what the premise was. And that's tough for me. When you start with a premise that I don't buy, that I don't find believable or doable, I give up real quick. I'll put a book down real quick. Robert says Stranger in a Strange Land a book where Heinlein fantasizes about being a rich writer, doctor, lawyer with three hot secretary. Yeah. Yeah, that was, you could tell he was inserting himself into that role. What was that character's name? Anyway, there's a book that I read years and years ago that I forgotten the name of long, long time ago, but recently rediscovered what it was and recently tried to listen to an audio book of it. It's called A Tale of Two Clocks. It was the original title, but when it was republished, it was changed. The title was changed to, I forget what it was changed to, Jewel Harshaw. Yeah, there we go. That's the character in Stranger in a Strange Land. There's this book called A Tale of Two Clocks. And it's supposed, when you read the description of the book, it's supposedly about these ancient beings that are like slugs, tiny little microscopic slugs that are actually machines, machines left over from some long dead civilization. And they've been discovered by human race on a number of places in the galaxy. They can't human humans can't figure them out. And then there's like some great secret of the past that's revealed at the end. But when you read the book, none of that is in the book. Until like, like, like the last half of the last chapter, the entirety of the book is about this this woman named Trigger RG. And it's the dumbest, it is the dumbest book. And I started, it's entirely about her and her stupid life and all the stupid characters around her and listening to the this audio book. And I couldn't even finish the audio book. I listened to the audio book that I found at LibriVox. Are you guys familiar with LibriVox? It's audio books that are read by volunteers, free audio books that are read by volunteers. Which means they're not professionally recorded. And this woman that's reading this particular book, oh my God, I couldn't finish it because someday I'll have to record a review where I talk about the book and I talk about this this unprofessional audio book of it. There are a number of things you should not do when you're recording an audio book. Number one, don't do voices. Don't try to, don't try to do voices unless you're someone, unless you're a professional like Roddy McDowell or someone who can do accents and voices and pull them off. Don't try to do voices. Number two, when the book describes that a character is talking while eating, you do not need to pretend that your mouth is full. When you're quoting them, you do not need to smack and yeah, you don't need to do that. And you don't need to yawn when a character is described as being tired. You don't need to pretend to do that shit. And number three, and most importantly, do not record your reading outdoors. Fuck's sake. Do not read outdoors where there's wind and airplanes flying over and other people talking. I couldn't get through the audio book. The book was terrible to begin with and then this really badly made audio book. But the book is just terrible. Tale of Two Clocks was the original title, but I can't remember what they changed it to. They changed it to something completely uninspiring, like the old ones or something. Damien says, hey, where'd you find that Hellraiser box in the background? Here, you're trying to open it. The Hellraiser box is a model kit, if you can believe it. It's just eight squares of plastic that you glue together. And you leave the top of the box, you leave unglued so you can open it and use it for storage, supposedly. But putting it under glass like that makes it look dangerous and badass. But I had one of those for years and years and then I sold it on eBay. And the second I sold it, I was like, damn it. Why did I sell that? So I had to go on eBay and find another one. Just go on eBay and look for a Hellraiser puzzle box model. You'll find them. They cost nothing because there's nothing to them. Like I said, it's just eight squares of plastic that come in a flat pack and a baggy. So I just put it, I went to Michael's and got one of these Plexiglas display domes with a wooden base on it and put it on top of a candle stick, a glass candle stick. That's all it is. And it looks badass. It looks great. And you notice, this is my genie bottle from I Dream a Genie. That's the real thing. It's just a whiskey decanter. It was made by, I forget who it was, Jack Daniels or somebody. Some typical thing. And one of the writers who was working on the series, he was walking down the street one day and he saw these in the window at a liquor store. And he said, oh, we could use that. And again, you can get these on eBay for like $25, $30, even for nothing. You would think they would be rare and expensive, but they're not. What else do you want to talk about? It's still just you two guys. There's nobody else coming in or nobody else staying. And Damien says, that looks cool. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things. Those genie bottles. I have another one. I got a second one. I don't know where it is right now. The cork on the stopper is damaged on this new one. It doesn't sit up straight. I tell you what are pretty rare and hard to find are these funny faces, funny faces, drinking cups in the pitcher. Those are from the 1960s when I was a kid. They're not too terribly expensive, but they are pretty rare. You won't see them very often. Most overrated sci-fi film, Blade Runner. Like I was just saying that earlier. People are always raving about being a great movie. I don't think it's good. Not always not great. It's not even good. Robert says, I just saw Metropolis for the first time in 10 years this weekend. Didn't like it as much this time around, but it still looks cool. Yeah, it's an important film. It's an amazing film. I live streamed it on the 50th Street channel about a year ago, this past summer. It was the first time I had seen the fully restored version. There were scenes in it that I'd never seen before. I've seen the movie many times. It's like two and a half hours long. It was hugely long, but it didn't seem long because it was so interesting. Robert says, Blade Runner is my favorite movie, but I respect your opinion. It's a boring movie. It's just boring. And again, just like every movie ever made based on a Philip K. Dick story, not only did they get the point of the story wrong, they actually reversed the meaning of the point. They do that to Philip K. Dick all the time. My vote for most overrated sci-fi film probably goes to either the thing or Dark City. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, all those creature effects and the thing are really overrated, I think, even for the day, even for back in the day. The special effects like that, those gore special effects, to me, they don't lend anything to the movie to make everything so gory like that. It's like a fetish. It's more of catering to a fetish, and it doesn't really help the film. I think Alien is a much better film, much more frightening, mostly because you hardly see the creature at all. Damien says, Metropolis has the robot that kind of reminds me of the one in Star Wars. I can't remember the name. You can't remember the name of the robot in Star Wars? You mean C-3PO? Yeah, here's the, yeah, there she is right there. The C-3PO was based on this design. C-3PO was absolutely based, inspired by this design. And Robert says, I like the special effects, but I wasn't interested in the characters. Yeah, Alien is way more fun. Yeah. Philip K. Dick, just before he died, he died before Blade Runner was finished, but he saw Alien and he panned it. He said it was just a haunted house in space. I'm like, that's so wrong. That is such a wrong interpretation of Alien. There's so much more to that film. A haunted house in space would have ghosts in it and would have unexplained, unexplained crazy shit going on. No, haunted house in space, that's just wrong. This is a wrong interpretation of the film. I read a, I just finished reading a Philip K. Dick book that I hadn't read before. Ubic. I read Ubic, which I've heard about plenty of people. People mention it all the time, but I had no idea what it was about or what it was like. And I liked it quite a bit. I thought it was really good. There was another Philip K. Dick book I read last year called Flow of My Tears, The Policeman Said, I think that's what it was. But that book, having read both of those books now, The Flow of My Tears was basically a really inferior, very sloppily written version of Ubic, really. Robert says tons of people like the thing now. Interestingly, it was hated by sci-fi fans and critics. Was it hated really? I saw, I saw somebody on Twitter posted that there's a whole new generation that will refer to the thing as the Among Us movie, which I think is pretty accurate. Ubic is amazing, made my mind spend 50 times while reading. Yeah, I couldn't tell what was going on through much of that, much of that book. It held my interest. Robert says I need to read more PKD. I started Flow of My Tears, but I didn't get far into it. It's not, it's not really worth finishing. If you want to, if you want to read basically the same premise, read Ubic. Well, I take it back. It's not exactly the same premise, but the same kind of psychological thing. The best Philip K Dick book I've ever read was The Man in the High Castle. I was super impressed with that book. Very impressed with it. I thought it was very well written, very tight, completely unlike Philip K Dick, because he's a really sloppy writer. Most of Philip K Dick's writing was short stories. Most of these movies they make based on Philip K Dick stories are based on stories that are just a few pages long, that are really just, they're just one, they're just one gag jokes basically. And then they make these movies that don't have anything to do with the story. They do it again and again they do it every time. There was that recent, just a year or two ago, there was that BBC miniseries on Netflix that was, there was all Philip K Dick stories. Every episode was a different Philip K Dick story. And in every story, they reversed the meanings of the stories. They literally reversed the meanings of the stories. They did it again and again and over and over. There was one episode in there that wasn't even a Philip K Dick story. It made no damn sense at all. And it wasn't even a Philip K Dick story. It was just something that the director made up. There was one episode of that though. I forget the name of it. There was one episode that was a dead on interpretation of the story that it was based on. And it was excellent. They did it exactly right. In fact, they made some subtle changes that I think improved the story. What was the name of that story? I forget. Damien says, I and the sky is also an interesting premise, but I'm not sure if I hated it. I and the sky, I'm not familiar with that one. Is that a Philip K Dick story? Robert says, do you like total recall? I think it's a good action movie. Oh, I hate. I saw that movie when it came out and I was really excited because it was directed by Paul Verhoeven and he had directed Robocop and I was really excited because Robocop was his first movie and I was really interested to see what he was going to do next. And I almost walked out because I detested that movie so much. First of all, it's one of these things where they say it's based on a Philip K Dick story. It is not. It's based on a story called we can remember it for you wholesale, which again, it's just a few pages long and it's a joke. It's a satire. It's a joke. The guy in question is like a 10 year old kid. And there's super intelligent mice in it. There's aliens. There's yeah, it's it has other than the premise of going to going to a service that will recover that will create false memories for you that ends up recovering memories that you didn't know that were there other than that premise. Nothing to do with the story that alone makes me will make me pan a movie. And I disagree with you. I didn't think it was a good action movie. I thought it was in Robocop. Robocop was extraordinarily violent. It was incredibly bloody and violent, but it was relevant to that particular type of story. It fit well with that kind of story. Total recall was was crazy violent for no reason. There was no reason for it. Like I was saying before, it was it was just a fetish. Just feeding some kind of nonsensical fetish. And then the the movie ended badly. I didn't like the characters. I didn't like the story. The violence was over the top for no reason. I thought it was just bad all the way through. I saw it that one time when it first came out and never again. And no, I don't like that movie. Robert says, honestly, one thing that prevents me from reading more PKD is that bookstores don't sell his books in cheap mass market versions, only more expensive trade paper bags. You can download all of his stories in text form. Everything he ever wrote, you can get in text form in one big zip file. Yeah, you can find those all over the place. Robert says, I think the ultra violence is Paul Verhoeven's style. His Starship Troopers movie is the same. Yeah, the Starship Troopers, it worked. I didn't see Starship Troopers when it first came out at the cinema. And it was for that very reason. I was so pissed off about Verhoeven's total recall that I actually stopped going to see science fiction movies during that period because I was so tired of being disappointed with bad science fiction movies. And then years later on cable TV, I saw Starship Troopers and I was like, I love this. This is great. They really, in this particular case, he took a premise and ran with it. He had to make a movie out of a story that was really nothing but a few entries in a journal. And I think he did a good job. He made a really good satire out of it too. People didn't realize at the time that the movie was satire. Robocop was too. Yeah, Starship Troopers, I like that movie. And I liked the animated series too. What was it called? What was it called? Roughnecks? I think it was called. I liked that series too. Interesting that there were two different teams that were developing. They developed the animated series and the movie at the same time. And there were two different teams working on them separately. And both teams independently came up with the idea of making Dizzy Flores a woman. And because in the, in the book, in Heinlein's book, the name Dizzy Flores was mentioned once. It was mentioned exactly once when he just throws off hand. He says Dizzy Flores was killed today. And that's it. And both of these writing teams independently came up with the idea of developing this Dizzy Flores character and making it a woman. I thought that was interesting. Damien says Eye in the Sky is about some research accident with six people in it, I think, and everyone experiences somebody else's mind as if it's reality and they jump from one person's mind to the next. It was odd. That sounds like Philip K. Dick. It's called Eye in the Sky. Philip K. Dick wrote hundreds of stories, hundreds. And he wrote a shitload of novels. I don't know how many. There's just tons and tons of stuff that he wrote. Okay. What else is there to talk about? I started to watch one of the new episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix. I started watching the Miles Cyrus episode. It was pretty good. I only got partway through it. I'll pick it up again. And I watched the new Love, Death, and Robot series. Some good stuff. Some really good stuff. The original Love, Death, and Robot series was amazing. It really floored me. And I was really pleasantly surprised to find that some of my favorite recent science fiction short stories were interpreted in that series and done well. And the same thing happened with this new series. I recognized a couple of the stories in there that I've read. And I liked what they did with them. The other thing I watched on Netflix was the Queen's Gambit, which I liked. I had to stop several times. I had to stop watching several times through the series because there's a lot of uncomfortable sex scenes in the series. I'm just not interested. Damien says the only Black Mirror episode I've seen is the one where there's a video and some sex in it. I don't care for that. There's a video and some sex. That doesn't really tell me which story you're talking about. But the whole point of Black Mirror is that they're supposed to be disturbing at a very guttural level. The original Black Mirror series I watched every episode. There was one episode that I didn't finish watching and I probably never will because it hit too close to home for me. It was too personal for me. Yeah, they did such a good job. It just got too personal for me and I didn't want to finish it. But I liked Queen's Gambit ultimately. I did not like Army of the Dead. I got about halfway through it and turned it off. I'm just not interested. It's another one of those things that people are raving about and I don't know why. The idea that this director, what's his name? Zach? What the hell is his name? Well, whatever. I think he did a crap job on the idea that he spent something like $20 million digitally editing out that one guy and replacing him with someone else. I mean, what a waste of money. If you already shot the movie with this guy, just use the footage. You know, a year from now, everybody's going to forget whatever it was that everyone's mad at him about. I don't even know what it is. Damien says, I found the episode. It was called Striking Vipers. That doesn't ring a bell. That's Black Mirror. Read me the, show me the description from the wherever you found it. I haven't seen every season of Black Mirror. I watched that first season all the way through. I've seen some episodes since then. That first episode of the first season of Black Mirror was traumatizing. It was absolutely traumatizing. But again, it was supposed to be. Absolutely traumatizing. I've been streaming now for an hour and a half. What else do you guys want to talk about? Any other subject matters you want to cover? This is an interesting headline. Naomi Wolfe, noted liar, has been suspended from Twitter for COVID conspiracy theories. Naomi Wolfe. Who the hell is she? Name sounds familiar. But the headline says, noted liar. I wish people would say that kind of thing more often, honestly. Just call a liar a liar. Just straight up say the word liar. Good lord. Republicans are getting more crazy about denying that Biden won the election. She's, for Christ's sake, somebody do something. Somebody in the goddamn Democratic Party in the goddamn White House fucking do something. Fuck's sake. Robert says, have you seen Godzilla vs. Kong? No, it doesn't look interesting to me. Um, Robert says, did you hear about the lawyer for one of the Capitol Raiders who tried to defend him by saying he was stupid? Yeah, I heard about that. Was he the same one who, who said that most of these, most of these Republicans, he called them, he called them retards? Did you, is that the same guy? Damien says, King Kong vs. Godzilla is kind of crap. Yeah, it looks crap to me. Um, and Robert says, yeah, that guy. Yeah, I know the guy you're talking about. Yeah, all of those assholes need to go to prison. Democrats aren't going to push for it though. They're too stupid. Too stupid and inept. None of that whole Trump thing, Trump never should have been president. He shouldn't have been allowed to run for president. He should have been, he should have been forced out of the presidential race. Obama should have, should have convicted him for all, all kinds of, should have had him kicked out for campaign violations, but, but he didn't do anything. He just sat there and let it happen. And that I've never seen, I've never seen a more incompetent loser than what's her name, the woman running the democratic party. She impeached Trump twice and failed both times. What the hell is her name? I can't think of her name right for some, but that's, that's the thing with me and names. I can't come up with names. I'll, I'll need to say somebody's name. Someone I've known my entire life. It'd be someone that I've known since I was seven years old or whatever. And I can't think of the damn, I can't get the damn name to come out of my mouth. It happens to me constantly. Not Hillary Clinton. No, the woman who's speaker of the house now is goddamn speaker of the house. Robert says, do you think Trump was a fluke or will he be the normal? Oh, he's the norm now. He's the norm. They're all like him. Have you not noticed? And when you look at, yeah, Pelosi, that's it. Nancy Pelosi. I couldn't think of her name. She had two slam dunks and she failed both times. What a colossal loser. But then I have to remind myself her job is not to defeat the Republicans. Her job is to maintain the illusion of choice, to maintain the illusion that there is a choice. And of course there isn't. It's not a two party system. It's a one party system. The, uh, the Republican party and the Democratic party are the same party. And the Democratic party's job is to maintain an illusion of democracy. And they can't even do that because Nancy Pelosi knows that if she changes things, if she pushes for change, the first thing that will happen is that she'll be kicked out. She'll lose a job. She knows that same thing with Schumer. Okay, I could think of Chuck Schumer's name. What a loser of an idiot. Chuck Schumer. Anyway, let's change the subject. Let's talk about science fiction. That's what I get for opening the web browser. What else have we read recently? And Robert says it's funny how Republicans had the decency to be outraged by Watergate if Trump had done something like Watergate wouldn't be in the top 50 or something. He has done Watergate. George W. Bush did Watergate 100 times over. When you look at the line from Nixon to Trump, it's a direct line. It's a straight line of, uh, Republicans just getting worse and worse and worse and worse, more openly racist, more openly crooked. It's a straight line. And I've been, I've been saying that since the 90s. I've been saying that for more than 20 years. Anyway, change the subject. Have you read Peter F. Hamilton? Yes, I like Peter F. Hamilton. The first Peter F. Hamilton book I read was, I think, Second Chance at Eden. I think that was the name of the book. It had some short stories in it plus the novel Second Chance at Eden. One of the short stories was called Sonny's Edge. It was one of my favorite short stories. And it's one of the stories that got animated in the first season of Love, Death and Robots. And I was glad to see it too. They did a pretty good job. Yeah, I like Peter F. Hamilton. Even though Second Chance at Eden, the novel was basically just a murder mystery. It had one of the most interesting science fiction settings I've ever seen, which is a memory that has stayed with me. And I actually think about it right now again. But the story itself was just a murder mystery, which I'm not impressed with. I think murder mysteries are the lowest form of literature. I really, speaking of which, I just earlier this year I finished reading The Yellow Room, The Incident of the Yellow Room, or The Mystery of the Yellow Room. I forget exactly. Damien says, I do like Pandora's Star by him. I haven't read Pandora's Star. One of my problems with Peter F. Hamilton is that his novels are so long. They're gigantic. And I really think that's a problem with these authors that can't write a book that's less than 1500 pages long. I mean, Jesus Christ, calm down. Most of those huge books are padding. They don't need to be that long. These guys make these books long, super long on purpose. But what was I saying? Oh, Mystery of the Yellow Room by the same guy who wrote Phantom of the Opera, the original Phantom of the Opera. I read a lot of hype about this book. It's the first locked room mystery. It's the very first locked room mystery. And when it was all over, I was like, wow, that was dumb. And I had the same reaction that I've had to every other murder mystery story that I've ever read. It's just dumb. It's just really, it's just the lowest form of literature. One of the things that the people, every once in a while, you'll run into someone who's reading a book. It'll be someone sitting next sitting on the bus next to you or at a restaurant reading a book. And then you'll ask them, what are you reading? And it's a murder mystery. And they'll always be like, I only read murder mysteries. That's all I read is murder mysteries. All I read is murder mystery. I read a book a day is murder mysteries. And they act like it's like it's an intellectual exercise, like it exercises your brain. No, they don't murder mysteries are dumb. Dumb as hell. You cannot figure out the mystery. You cannot figure out for yourself who is the murderer in these damn murder mystery books because the authors, they withhold information. They introduce new characters on the last page. They introduce secret relationships that were never mentioned before. You cannot figure out the mystery. They're designed for you not to be able to ever figure them out. And this first, this first, this yellow room book was exactly like that. It was the first locked room mystery novel. And it was exactly like all of that. So Robert is saying, not an Agatha Christie fan. I presume. No, not really. I do like, and then there were none. There's a really original, really original story idea when she wrote it. And murder on the Orient Express, I think is a really original idea. Both very original. The only other Agatha Christie story I'm familiar with, I read a random Poirot book that I found at like a hotel or something. And it was dumb. It was really, really dumb and really bad. I couldn't even tell you the title of it. But I had the same reaction to the Sherlock Holmes stories. I read a number of Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time, just a couple of years ago. I started with a study in Scarlet, which I didn't know was the first, that it was the first Sherlock Holmes stories. And it was dumb. There was no detective work in this. It's not a detective story. It was just dumb. He's not doing any detective work. He's making crazy leaps of logic that no rational person would ever make. But of course he's right about everything because it's fiction and he's the hero. Right, Robert, there's no way you could figure that out. But the idea of making all of them guilty? Nobody ever done that before. That was original. That was truly original. Coming up with something that no one would ever think of is one thing. But writing the same story over and over and over again, and then like this yellow room novel that I read, it winds up the same way that every murder mystery does. When it comes down to the very end and the detective or the journalist or whoever is the hero, there's always a guy who's the hero. There's always a character who's the genius detective hero who figures it out when nobody else could, when the police couldn't do it. It's such a stupid trope. When it comes to the end and the guy makes his presentation, he has everybody in the room and then he reveals it. The author could legitimately choose any character to be guilty. Any character. And they could come up with some bullshit to explain this character being the guilty one. Any one of them could be it. It's lame. It's just stupid. Robert says, I think the Sherlock Holmes stories are more about the character than the actual mystery. I agree. It's the same way that Dr. Who is more about his personality, his quirky personality than it is about time travel. Because if he was actually a time traveler, he would never be in danger. He would never be surprised by anything. Because he has a goddamn time machine. It's one of my problems with almost every time machine, every time travel movie or story ever written. There's always some emergency comes up where their lives are in danger and they're always like, oh, we're running out of time. No, you're not running out of time. You have a time machine. Stupid. Damien says, I agree. I think murder mysteries are so cookie cutter and they hardly try to invite the reader to be the investigator. They mostly try to cheat their way out. They don't even cheat. They bullshit. They just bullshit. That's why I like the movie murder by death. If you've never seen the movie murder by death, you need to see murder by death. It's from 1976. It's about this guy named Lionel Twain. Lionel Twain who lives at 2, 2, Twain. His mansion is at 2, 2, Twain. He's played by Truman Capote. He's talking with a lisp. He's Lionel Twain living at 2, 2, Twain. It has, what's this guy's name? Obi-Wan Kenobi. Who played Obi-Wan Kenobi? How can I think of his name? Alec Guinness has Alec Guinness in it. But he invites all the great detectives of the world to his mansion to solve a murder that's going to happen. And by the end of the thing, there's all kinds of, every detective takes turns standing up and revealing, revealing knowledge that nobody else knew. Revealing new characters and that so and so his real name is actually this. And then Lionel Twain stands up and says, and he paces around the room and chastises them all for the things that I just said. Introducing new characters on the last page. That's why I like that movie. Yeah, if you've never seen Murder by Death, you need to see it. The movie Clue, everyone talks about what a great movie Clue was. I didn't think Clue was that good. Clue, the one based on the board game Clue, that had multiple endings, which is a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about. They could have ended, any murder mystery could have ended any number of ways. But Clue was a pale, pale ripoff of Murder by Death. Pale, pale ripoff. If you want to see the real Clue movie, watch Murder by Death. And nobody's heard of it. Nobody's ever seen it. Well, Alec Guinness was making Murder by Death. He was, it had a lot of other stars in it. Alec Guinness, Peter Faulk, Truman Capote, like I said, I'm drawing a blank right now. Peter Sellers. Everybody in the movie was a recognizable star. But he was looking over a script that he had been sent. He was sitting on set looking at the script that he had been sent to check out. It was called Star Wars. And one of the other people asked him, what is that you're reading? He said, I don't know. He said, I don't know. It's pretty crazy, but we'll see. And Robert says, have you ever read Cages of Steel? Isaac Asimov, pretty good sci-fi mystery hybrid. No, I'm not. Cages of Steel. Is it one of the robot books? There's a movie that I livestreamed last summer. It was one of the first things that we livestreamed, actually back in March of last year. It was a major TV movie from the 1950s called The Strange Case of the Cosmic Raise. It's an educational film. Wait, not Cages, Caves. Okay, I have heard of Cages of Steel. It is one of the robot books. But no, I've not read it. But yeah, this thing called Strange Case of the Cosmic Raise. You should be able to find it online. It's an educational film written and directed by written and directed by the guy who created It's a Wonderful Life. And Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Damien says, the worst murder mystery I've seen is identity from 2002. That doesn't sound familiar. But the guy who created It's a Wonderful Life. What the hell is his name? Anyway, he created this series of made for television films, educational films, called the Bell Science series. And one of them is called Strange Case of the Cosmic Raise. And it's an educational film about the discovery of cosmic rays. And it's really creative. These scientists present it as a murder mystery. And they try to sell it as a legitimate murder mystery to three famous authors, including Edgar Allen Poe and Dostoevsky, who are puppets, who are marionettes. Frank Capra, that's right. And it's really clever. And along the way, these scientists, they're talking about all these particles that scientists know about. And then they discover that these so-called cosmic rays are actually some new kind of particle. They start to suspect it's a new kind of, they start discovering new kind of particles that they never suspected existed. And the Edgar Allen Poe or one of the others interrupts him and says, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, you can't do that. You can't introduce new characters in a legitimate mystery. That's cheating. And one of the others says, no, no, no. He says, no, wait, wait, come on. What if you, what if you were writing a story about, what if you were writing a story and the big reveal turned out to be that there's a new kind of human, there's a new species of human. That would be tremendous. They get into an argument about that very kind of thing. And one of my favorite lines in it is the Dostoevsky puppet. So they say something funny. He's laughing at something funny that somebody says. And he says, he says, wait till I tell Trotsky, it will kill him. That makes me laugh every time. But you just see strange cases of cosmic rays that you haven't seen it. You should see that whole series, everything in that series that the ones that Frank Capron made. There's one called, the first one was called Our Mr. Son. And the second one was called Hemo the Magnificent about blood, about the science of the blood stream. And then Strange Case of the College of Grace. And then the last one he made was about the weather. It was called Unchained Goddess. That's what it was called. They're all really good. I've been doing this for an hour and 45 minutes. So I still have Robert and Damien with me. It's just been you two guys this whole time. That's pretty sad that none of my regulars came in. Damien says, each time I read a story by Asimov or Clark, I keep telling myself these scientists are really bad character writers. But man, the stories are still bad. Yeah, they were really good at that whole sense of discovery. Yeah, Arthur C. Clark in particular, when he was at his best, Arthur C. Clark was was great about that. Like I only recently read what the hell was that book called? Damn it. But I was riveted all the way through it. They were exploring a alien artifact that had come flying into the solar system. And I had no idea what was going to happen next. I was I was fascinated all the way through it. Rama. That's what it was called. Rendezvous with Rama. Yeah, I'd never read it until just last year. Or maybe it was the year before. Robert says, I'm usually not able to join your live stream through the work that I have the day off today. Well, thanks for coming today. Thanks for spending time on your day off. But yeah, I'll continue to read more of this. But there's there's all sorts of book reviews that I could be recording this year. But I'm not Damien says I'm surprised there hasn't been a film on Rama. I guess that is kind of surprising. It would be expensive. I had this music playing the whole time. This has been going the whole time. But yeah, there's there's a lot of book reviews that could be recording this year. But I haven't been recording book reviews because there's no motivation for me to record book reviews. Nobody watches my videos. I don't have any paid subscribers. David Fincher and Morgan Freeman tried to make a Rama movie really. I guess it was more it was longer ago than just last year because I remember recording a discussion with Becky M. And I haven't done that in years. So it's been a while longer ago than I remember. I saw a really interesting Arthur C. Clark video that I had never seen before. It's called Arthur C. Clark's Seven Wonders of the World in which he named it's on YouTube. I found it on YouTube. It's an hour long, maybe 90 minutes. I don't remember. But he names his own personal Seven Wonders of the World and they're all pretty interesting. So look that up. Go on YouTube and look for Arthur C. Clark's Seven Wonders. All right. I think I'm coming up on two hours here. I think I'm done talking to somebody else. Is there somebody else watching? I see YouTube on YouTube. There's been somebody on Twitch this whole time. But I think it's a Twitch bot. I'm actually getting sleepy. I've been up I've been up most of the night. I've been up for like 12 hours. But anyway, I recommend Queen's Gambit if you haven't seen it. I do not recommend Army of the Dead. I also binge the entire four seasons of The Good Place. It's one of my favorite series. I recommend that if you've never seen it. Seasons three and four get kind of long. But it's one of the most original things I've ever seen. Robert says, nice talking to you, Keith and Damien. Have a nice day. Damien, please follow me on Twitch. I'm typing it into the chat here. 50th Street Studio. Yeah, follow us on Twitch at 50th Street Studio. Every Saturday morning we show bad cartoons. And twice a month I have Saturday evening movies that I show. This Saturday evening, we're going to be looking at some early Jim Henson Muppets work. In the morning, I don't know what we'll be watching. It'll be some bad children's shows. Damien says, all right, I'll try to get some people to join too. Great, thanks. Let me get that link for you so you can go straight to it. I encourage people to follow us on Twitch. There's the link. To follow us on Twitch because we can stream anything on Twitch really without worries. YouTube is so problematic. We get hit for copyright problems every time we try to livestream on YouTube. I've had some good luck recently. Some of our more recent shows have gone off easily. But Twitch is mostly where people watch us at 50th Street. Yeah, if you could get more people to join us, that would be great. We've done more than 40 episodes of Bad Saturday Morning. 40. And there's no shortage of material. We're not even close to running out of stuff. This past Saturday we watched some early children's TV, like the Pinky Lee Show and Rudy Kazooie and Winky Dink, the Winky Dink and You Show. Stuff that's been entirely forgotten. Look at the archive of shows on our Twitch channel there. There's some great stuff. Really bad stuff too. But yeah, thanks guys for watching. I don't know when I'll do this again. I almost never do it anymore. But it was nice to see you. Bye.