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Episode 545 - Fondly Fahrenheit (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-27 00:14:06
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

We're tracking a killer robot in Alfred Bester's Fondly Fahrenheit, and it's a blast!

Special thanks to reader Conor MacNamara! Read some Fitzroy Lagan at Creepypasta!

Next up: a bonus episode on the monster antics of the movie THEM!


Comments

Scott Morrison

(Hulk Hogan mode activated)HELL YEAH BROTHER!

Scott Morrison

One of my favorite Bester stories. He did quite a few that edge more into weird/Lovecraftian territory. "The Stars My Destination" has some pretty horrific elements within it.

Thunk

The android struggled with the flipping between points of view. Then I decided I liked it!

Richard Horsman

The last Bester I read was The Deceivers, which...imagine the tone of Playboy's "party jokes" page stretched out to novel length. This was much, much better, and was a reminder of how good Bester at his, er, best is.

Anonymous

Funnily enough, when Chris was talking about the ubiquity of psionics in sci-fi the first place my mind went was Babylon 5—where one of the teeps is even named *Alfred Bester!* (And that cold son of a bitch is played by Walter Koenig, tying this back to Rachel Watches Star Trek.) The B5 teeps are heavily inspired by both Scanners and 1984, and aside from the Psi Corp being cool it shows off the place in human culture and history the teeps have and the particular ways they've been marginalized and used. The great thing is, you eventually *do* get an explanation for telepathy beyond "It's the future." Mild spoilers here: one of the aloof, Old Ones-esque Precursor races actually genetically engineered psionic ability into humans somewhere between the modern day and the events of B5 in secret. In fact, that's why the other sophonts in the galaxy have teeps. They were *created*—not as a mistake or a joke like us, but to be weapons of war. Our species was regarded as little more than ammunition.

Anonymous
>>58574469

Hooray- came here to say basically this. Also I think psychic powers in SFF come out of that early 20th century assumption that the new science of psychology would potentially unlock human psychic potential. It's woo to us but sci-fi (or at least weird science) from the 1890s-1940s perspective and got a booster shot with the 60s new age stuff. Carnacki's electric pentacle is another part of that whole weird science shtick that didn't stick in the collective SFF/Weird mindspace as much as esper stuff did but I think they're from the same sci-fi ballpark. Edit: Actually even the blood transfusions in Dracula could be seen as being at the edge of that real science/weird science zone (in reality of course the odds are more in favour of Lucy having a fatal reaction unless she happened to be a universal recipient or all the men happened to share her blood type). We suspend disbelief because the general idea (if not the actual details) of a blood transfusion is part of elementary medical science to us. Electric pentacles are perhaps too dated and weird for us to suspend as much disbelief. Psionics lies in a neat middle ground where we're willing to handwave away most of the questions we might have.

Anonymous

First and foremost, brilliant song! I do hope you were as deliriously happy to created it as I was to hear it. For reasons that escape me, I was reminded of the Greg Hawkes album Niagara Falls. That out of the way, yeah, this is one heck of a story all right. Forbidden Planet monsters from the Id mixed up with Blade Runner replicants and something akin to an Abbott and Costello road comedy. Shouldn't work. But boy does it ever. I was under the impression that the -er in Bester's name was not for comparative purposes so much as to signify his profession. But, heck, it pretty much comes to the same end.

Kit Ainslie

Sanjay Matthew beat me to the punch! I definitely think psionics are one of those weird holdovers from the early days of scifi, where psychology’s investigation into the mind and the CIA’s investigation into psychedelics were treated with real scientific scrutiny. A lot of early scifi included psychic abilities as part of the projection of modern sciences forward, just like today modern science and technology has inspired things like Black Mirror and Interstellar. Psionics got lucky in that by the time public perception had moved it from scientific theory to disproven quackery it was already a staple of the genre. Thus as Chad demonstrated it now feels as natural in science fiction as the other sciences (robots, genetics, etc) that didn’t become unscientific with the passage of time. I often wonder what genres would look like if certain key things were changed. What if Tolkien had studied the legends and lore of Japan instead of The Ring Cycle and western mythology? Would modern western fantasy tropes feature trickster coyotes, old objects gaining souls and coming to life, and toilet ghosts? If 1900s scientists had been searching for the mechanism behind self-immolation would Spock light himself on fire instead of mind meld? Interesting food for thought, and probably a decent writing exercise at least.

Lord Rancid

I always felt that psionics was Sci-fi's answer to magic in Fantasy, certainly in many game systems that have both science fiction and fantasy counterparts (Warhammer for example) it very much is. The degree of it's acceptance or existence within a science fiction setting a sound indicator for how serious or hard that sci-fi is, the difference between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy perhaps.....

Lord Rancid
>>58584309

Sadly there's s till a LOT of folks out there who believe in it despite teh evidence of it being quackery. I'm a member of the Fortean Times Facebook group for my sins and it brings me equal amounts amusement and horror at what people fill their "God Holes" with...

Anonymous

Bester did enjoy a good ditty. "The Demolished Man" features the use of the world's most annoyingly catchy jingle as a defence against mind-reading. This story, on the other hand, is a timely warning to keep your house cool if you have a Roomba.

Ben Gilbert

Much of post-40s SF with ESP was writing for the the editor. Writers knew to write stories that the editor would publish and the most powerful editor of the day, John W. Campbell, definitely believed in ESP and other "mind sciences" including early dianetics and general semantics. He also popularized the myth that we only use 10% of our brain.

Ben Gilbert

SF has several tropes that are unscientific but still popular. Isaac Asimov stated that he didn't believe in faster than light travel but he used it in his writing because it made for a good story.

Anonymous

I just want to share that I found a reading of this on YouTube, and the reader kept pronouncing "rumba" as "roomba," leading to the delightful phrase, "lunatic roomba," which is kind of an apt summary for this story! I love the song too! Maybe you can do a remix that works in the word "yeet?" It's what the kids all say these days when they're going on a murderous heat-induced rampage.

Incaptivity

Have to say I had doubts but that tune at the end is what I would go so far to call “a banger”. Great stuff and a great story, surprised I’d missed it

Anonymous

One of my favorite short stories and now one of my favorite tunes, holy hell, that's catchy!

Anonymous

If you want to read this one and don't have a copy in an anthology somewhere, Luminist.org has a copy of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Aug 1954 where it was first published (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cHPd44NAcOah5rC-bI46-wi6yWLOEZaD/view)

Anonymous

Similar to others I enjoyed the story - the perspective shift/blending was really well done. That's something that would be easy to do visually in a move/tv show, but having it work just as well written is an achievement. And I had my doubts about the song too, but really enjoyed it!

Anonymous

Dear God, but that song is an absolute banger! I got a little Duran Duran vibe off of it. Such an earworm! As always, fantastic episode.

Anonymous

Fifer, you monster, I woke up with "All reet, beat the heat" in my head.

Anonymous
>>58701389

Totally, and near the beginning I thought of O Superman by Laurie Anderson.

Anonymous

Great episode and great story. The idea of an initial killer, and a subsequent killer inspired by (and perhaps leaving blame to) the former, really reminded me of The Leopard Man (1943), directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton.

Anonymous
>>58597524

All reet feel the heat All reet, all reet! Wake up, you're on fleek Hot gold? Just yeet!

Anonymous

I remember being furious at the inclusion of that psionic crap in TNG when it first aired in the UK. Instinctively it felt WRONG, like watching the battle scene in Captain America: Civil War only to see Sonic the Hedgehog go head to head with The Hulk. These days I barely notice it, but I still prefer my sci-fi to stay "scientific". Perhaps because science is so important and mankind's best defence against its own prejudice and "woo". Maybe I'm not meant to but I'm loving these tunes lately! Both The March Dracula's number and "All reet..." have become firm favourites. Another great show. I love Weird Fiction but the addition of classic sci-fi and the occasional gothic or Robert E Howard piece is working really well. Would love some more Pu Songling or some Edgar Rice Burroughs sometime.

Anonymous

This story reminds me of the Siouxsie and the Banshees song 92 degrees. It has a great intro quote from the movie It came from outer space: "Did you know, Putnam, that more murders are committed at 92 Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once. Lower temperatures, people are easygoing. Over 92, it's too hot to move. But just 92, people get irritable!"

Tomas Rawlings

Wanted to note there is a sci-fi 'in theory' way you can get telepathy; so there's a thing called Quantum entanglement, when groups of particles are generated in a way that they all share the same status always regardless of distance apart. Which means that in theory you can create arrays of entangled particles, place paired-groups in different devices and each device will always know the state of the other instantaneously. (There's more too it than that of course, but that is the basic idea). So in Peter F Hamilton's sci-fi work, he uses this idea for a culture called 'Edenist' who grow groups of entangled particles into the brains of people, giving them telepathic linkages with each other. It's not full telepathy, but close! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy

Anonymous

This was both an excellent choice of story to cover and a particularly fun episode to hear from you two. Chad, that song is a keeper. I went back to read the story after the episode (it's been a long time since I read it, or any Bester for that matter), and I couldn't read the lyrics without your song becoming an ear worm for the rest of the story. I couldn't help but wonder when I was reading if Douglas Adams wasn't poking fun at this tale a little in Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency, namely with his (spoilers) malfunctioning killer monk android. Then again, he was just lampooning a regular element in sci-fi. As you noted in the episode, murderous androids/robots are a well-worn trope in sci-fi. Moxon's Master immediately came to mind, which you all covered many years ago. Thinking of prominent examples from films--Ash (Alien), David (Prometheus), the Nexus V's (Blade Runner), the Terminators, Johnny 5, Mechagodzilla (wait, not that one)--it seems that the anxiety expressed, other than a distrust of our technological creations turning against us, is the fear of emergent properties and unpredictability in those creations. Reflecting on all of these sources (both written fiction and films), maybe it's reductionistic, but I have come to think these are all really Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde stories (which you also covered so well) dressed up in a different context. In this case, the android has two personalities, one which is unpredictable and mediated by some environmental trigger. We clearly find something very compelling in this story type, and it's interesting to see you all continue to explore it!

Scott Morrison
>>58747317

I'm 98% sure that quote came from the Ray Bradbury story 'Touched with Fire'.

Anonymous

So many great concepts spinning off of this one. Clarke has a good approach to scientific psionics in "The Light of Other Days" where the new generation all get on board the latest tech and get quantum wormholes installed in their brains, becoming a semi-homogeneous hive-mind (like that would ever happen, right?). Great book. I personally like the idea that, in reality, AI would find us so laughably easy to manipulate the robots could literally get away with murder. Like a kid with their first pay check meeting the most seasoned salesman ever, we wouldn't stand a chance.

Anonymous

I would love to hear you guys discuss "I have no mouth and I must scream" by Harlan Ellison

Jeremy Impson

Telepathy had become something of a tired trope at this point, probably because we know too much about Radio Frequency transmission and the Inverse Square law. And don't get me started on telekinesis!!

Anonymous

Great episode, great story, great song( a definite hit by if I’m not mistaken)when you sang it in the episode it immediately reminded me of “I feel fantastic “ the Tara the Android song from you tube, if you need another creepy android song.

ponyfhtagn

Hearing the name 'Alfred Bester' I immediatly tought of Alfred Bester from Babylon 5 and so it was interesting to me that you then launched into a discussion about telepathic / psyonic powers in science fiction, because there's a lot of that in B5; notably including the character Bester.

Anonymous

Wow what a song! It's like a Legos Movie theme for gruesome but efficient murderbots!