Listen now | How Insanity, Not Sanity, Preserves the Human Race. Is madness our superpower? In Rocketeer #64 I’m reading Fredric Brown’s “Letter to a Phoenix”—180,000 years of wars, rebirth, insanity topping alien sanity. Fear sparks our 2025 rise! Brown’s pulp run’s a cosmic jitterbug—hear it on my new mic, cosmic cats!!
This was a neat story. It reminded me of the Stephen King short story The Jaunt, about how time travel has to be done while unconscious because it can cause madness.
And it reminded me of the Methusaleahs in Altered Carbon. They're wealthy and they've been around a long time, so they have hundreds of kids, grandkids and great grandkids.
I don't know those two stories. I'll have to check them out. :)
As far as immortality stories go, I also like "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins. It's a magical realism story about the search for the perfect Jasmine perfume. Robbins is absurdist and I like that. :) It's far differnt from Fredric Brown's, of course.
I would recommend The Jaunt because it's a short story. Altered Carbon is a novel with a lot of interesting ideas and the density and cynicism of a cyberpunk novel. It was made as a series by Netflix in the late 2010s
Cool! I'll look for them. :) I woke up this morning thinking about "The Man in the High Castle," the book, not the series. I've read it before but maybe my subconscious is suggesting that I re-read it.
I tried the series and gave up partway through. It missed the subtly of what PKD did in the book. It tangentially touches on what you posted recently 🙂
I also gave up on the series. I don't think any media wants to key into PKD's insights. They ALWAYS monkey around with his stories when they make them into movies/tv.
Yeah the closest I've seen to truly tapping into the Philip K. Dick core is Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly. Trippy, hilarious and tragic all at once.
This was a neat story. It reminded me of the Stephen King short story The Jaunt, about how time travel has to be done while unconscious because it can cause madness.
And it reminded me of the Methusaleahs in Altered Carbon. They're wealthy and they've been around a long time, so they have hundreds of kids, grandkids and great grandkids.
I don't know those two stories. I'll have to check them out. :)
As far as immortality stories go, I also like "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins. It's a magical realism story about the search for the perfect Jasmine perfume. Robbins is absurdist and I like that. :) It's far differnt from Fredric Brown's, of course.
I'd never heard of that story. I'll look for it.
I would recommend The Jaunt because it's a short story. Altered Carbon is a novel with a lot of interesting ideas and the density and cynicism of a cyberpunk novel. It was made as a series by Netflix in the late 2010s
Cool! I'll look for them. :) I woke up this morning thinking about "The Man in the High Castle," the book, not the series. I've read it before but maybe my subconscious is suggesting that I re-read it.
I tried the series and gave up partway through. It missed the subtly of what PKD did in the book. It tangentially touches on what you posted recently 🙂
I also gave up on the series. I don't think any media wants to key into PKD's insights. They ALWAYS monkey around with his stories when they make them into movies/tv.
Yeah the closest I've seen to truly tapping into the Philip K. Dick core is Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly. Trippy, hilarious and tragic all at once.
You trust your intuition when it comes to pulp!