SFUltra
In this podcast, Sean McTiernan attempts to develop a genuine appreciation for science fiction by reading one book at a time. Each episode likely explores a different sci-fi novel, offering his personal reflections and reactions. The show is described as a self-experiment in genre appreciation.
Episodes
Me Here To Do The Thinking #2 - 76 - 88
"People write in magazines that I make different kinds of records just to draw attention to myself. If I ever saw the little wimps that were saying that, then I'm sure that I'd have to fucking kill them … There's many better ways to draw attention to myself. I could kill music critics if I wanted to … I could burn down Geffen Records … I could burn myself down in public if I wanted to—that would g
Me Here To Do The Thinking #1 - 63 - 75
"Volume's not really that important. It's the size of the room and the relationship of the sound to the enclosure it's in that makes a difference." - Neil Young On this series, I am joined by Cameron Kunzelman so we can listen to the work of Neil Young in roughly chronological order and then talk about it. On this episode: Neil Young Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere After the Gold Rush Harvest Tim
SFULTRA #41 - Monroe Girls - Antoine Volodine
"Never stopped to wonder why then I saw black and my face splashed in the sky" - Neil Young, Powerfinger
SFULTRA #40 - Dai Dark - Q Hayashida
"Many are transforming in that glorious condition normally described as decay. Transforming through splinter and chemical imbalance. By fading and forgetfulness." - Brian Catling, Lantern Slides, Several Clouds Colliding
SFULTRA #39 - His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem
"So I think when I'm looking at you, I see you there. But I can't just explain what you are. I see you there and you could be photographed, but then after you'd been photographed, one still wouldn't know what your realism was. You'd have to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a realism of a person… I'm talking bollocks…" - Francis Bacon, The Brutality Of Fact
SFULTRA #38 - Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand - Samuel R. Delany
"If you can talk about it, why paint it?" - Francis Bacon
SFULTRA #37 - Red Hook Variations
Main works discussed: The Horror at Red Hook - H. P. Lovecraft The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle The Courtyard - Alan Moore Neonomicon - Alan Moore Providence - Alan Moore "So you think you know what terror is As it stares from the newspaper page Yeah of course you all know what horror is It's the rage of the age Well, intimidation doesn't have a focus It oozes from every pore Murder doesn'
SFULTRA #36 - Vurt - Jeff Noon
"Tell me what you know about a man's affliction PC plod talk pure science fiction" - Cowboy Dave, Happy Mondays
Right Where You Are Sitting Now #2 - Routine Excercise
"You can't have feelings alone" - William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Right Where You Are Sitting Now #1 - My Past, Like A Terrible River
Works covered: And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks Junky: The Definitve Text Of Junk Queer Yage Redux
SFULTRA #35 - Beasts - John Crowley
"The elementary unit of language — the statement — is the order-word. Rather than common sense, a faculty for the centralization of information, we must define an abominable faculty consisting in emitting, receiving, and transmitting order-words. Language is made not to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience...Words are not tools, but we give children language, pens, and notebooks a
The Black Pool with Tim MacGabhann
To celebrate the release of his memoir The Black Pool on May 22nd, I spent 2 hours boring my close friend Tim MacGabhann into unconsciousness. Book launch details: 6pm, May 22nd in Hodges Figgis Dublin. Click here to read an extract that became the opening chapter: https://thedublinreview.com/article/the-black-pool/ Link to preorder or buy The Black Pool: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produ
SFULTRA #34 - Holy Lacrimony - Michael DeForge
"You get under my skin I don't find it irritating, You always play to win but I won't need rehabilitating oh no" - Another Girl Another Planet, The Only Ones
DUBLIN EVENT MAY 10th - Barbaric Genius Extended Cut Screening/ Director Q+A/ Vsevolod Plotkin Noise Set
Full details of the event are here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/event-dublin-may-127442825
Deep Territory #12 - Front Toward Enemy
"Thank god skin-patch is nearly gone And the impress of fingers dead Have disappeared and left me alone That one night I did not put jackboots on Don't want to end Reflection It's still there, though I am gone" - The Fall, Bremen Nacht
Deep Territory #9 - Lanark - Alasdair Gray
"My friends, you should not live like this." - Chekhov, when asked what his plays were supposed to convey. "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." - II Corinthians, 5:1 NKJV
Deep Territory #8 - The Erstwhile - Brian Catling
'Blake is always unexpected. If you think you know all the works, you're wrong. There's always something that comes up; if it's not a new work, then an old work will appear in a different kind of way. There are certain works I'm completely obsessed by and I don't know how he made them. I don't know how he made them at that time because there's nothing like them: they're completely original. I thin
Deep Territory #5 - Crash - J.G. Ballard
"So many great books have drowned in respect" - Iain Sinclair, Crash "Vaughn never been a duck-and-diver He spit on the mic, yuck, saliva Hold it like a truck driver hold a CB on a sharp turn Still clutchin' his chest from the heartburn…" - Viktor Vaughn, Saliva "Into the thundering cannon and into the murdering gun" - William Blake, Jerusalem
Deep Territory #4 - Passion Of New Eve - Angela Carter
"And in Hell beneath & a mighty & awful change threatend the Earth. The American War began. All its dark horrors passed before my face..." - William Blake, Letter to John Flaxman September 12 1800 I'm joined on this episode by fellow Live At The Death Factory host and writer Astrid Rose, whose work you can find here: https://astridannerose.gumroad.com/
Deep Territory #2 - The Vorrh - B Catling
"...writing could provide me with the means of so radically outwitting myself that I could bring my hidden experiences, my unadmitted self into view." - Raymond Roussel
SFULTRA #33 - UXA.GOV - Blake Butler
"The Stumbling Block is an ark of extinction. A bouillon hive of the murdered past, frozen dry to a mass. Something has warmed its corner, the oxoed grit bleeds a vein of contagion, virulent in its passion to embrace and swim in human tides" - Brian Catling, The Stumbling Block
SFULTRA #32 - The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
"Cough up a pointless lecture Does it matter? Vomit me more conjecture Doesn't matter Argue till your left brain dies Does it matter? Presume to abuse my time Doesn't matter Let me paint a perfect picture Let it read like a holy scripture The words that leave my mouth Are just words you can live without Found community a struggle for me It's a collision: clash and grieve Nonsense screws and breeds
SFULTRA #31 - The Cipher - Kathe Koja
"...okay, that's life, that's what I was told anyway And picking your feet till they bleed may be the half of it If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle Maybe every fourth person is a dumb fuck Listen, listen carefully now: here's the answer It rhymes with axe Why it's those personal acts, of course Those personal acts Those suicide pacts Those carelessly stored razorblades in the hands of
SFULTRA #30 - Rammellzee - Racing For Thunder
"BE WHO YOU ARE, WRECK THEM, AND THEN DIE" - Rammellzee
Explanatory Collapse #20 - On The Beach: Empty Space
"There are no castles without ghosts And no spirits without hope But nobody passes the test of time I do not fear the buried sounds Of words that echo underground A memory is a loaded gun And I remember everyone I remember everyone I remember you" - Ghosts, Nomeansno
Explanatory Collapse #19 - On The Beach: Nova Swing
"For every detective novel, regardless of its story, is for every reader, above all, a novel about himself: about what happened to the reader as a human individual in general, as an individual developing from a child into an adult; as a living being who experiences continuous transitions there and back, from layer to layer of consciousness..." - On The Detective Story, Sergei Eisenstein
Explanatory Collapse #17 - On The Beach: Light
"Some roads are only seen at night Ghost roads, nothing but neon signs But some nights, the neon gas gets free And turns into walking dead like me And I've been making promises I know I'll never keep One of these days, I'm gonna leave you in your sleep I'll have to go when the whistle blows, the whistle knows my name Baby, I was born on a train" - Born On A Train, Magnetic Fields
Explanatory Collapse #9 - Viriconium Pt 3
patreon.com/sfultra "...'For I aint, you must know,' said Betty, 'much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices." - Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
Explanatory Collapse #8 - Viriconium Pt 2
"The fire of wild abandon burns so beautiful and bright The ashes fade away after consuming all the light The fire of wild abandon burns so beautiful and hot I used to know the way back home but somehow I forgot Through all the smoke I can't see you What's the thing you been turned into? Something fun, or someone new The fire of wild abandon Feel the lie becoming true Whose eyes are you seeing t
Explanatory Collapse #7 - Viriconium Pt 1
"I have said before that the music is the words and the words are the music. It is all there for you to understand if you can and for you to feel, regardless." - Sun Ra, This Planet is Doomed patreon.com/sfultra
SFULTRA #29 - Liege-Killer - Christopher Hinz
"I fire myself ten times a day I throw myself in a watery grave With fourteen horses on top of my head I hear the voice again and again" - I Fire Myself, Mary Timony
SFULTRA #28 - The Third Eye - Lobsang Rampa
"eurt si em tuoba yas yeht gnihtyrevE" - Euphoria, Kendrick Lamar (intro sample from The Wiz) I'm happy to welcome back Matt to tackle this terrible book. Matt's youtube channel Bookpilled is one of the main inspirations behind SFUltra and his engaging, thoughtful reviews make him official YouTube Book GOAT. His patreon is worth it and then some. Matt's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Bookpille
SFULTRA #27 - Monarch - Candice Wuehle
"...Thank God you let me crash on your couch Who's my God that I'm prayin' to now? … Made her go home, felt the virus Web of life is my weed, false dreams stripped by silence … Deals they had us sign, for years, it had mе blind Think I had to hit rewind and think about why I do shine … My whole family cursed, now get the fuck out my ride … Nothin', nothin', nothin', nothin', nothin' … If a killer
SFULTRA #26 - Radiant Terminus - Antoine Volodine
"You lie in the graveyard Well you're rotting away When I talk to you daily You've got nothing to say You lie in the graveyard Well you are down making plans Well you control all my thoughts Well you make dust fall" - Graveyard , Butthole Surfers
SFULTRA #25 - Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed
"Fear stalks the land. (As usual; so what else is new?)" - Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
SFULTRA #24 - Blue Lard - Vladimir Sorokin
"He looked round her drawing-room and marvelled how he, who prided himself on not being able to endure any-thing in bad taste, could tolerate this chamber of horrors. Everything, he mused, was beautified by his passion.." - Laughter In The Dark, Vladimir Nabokov One year anniversary blog: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sfultra-year-1-99301744
WDYTYA?IA #5 - The Fifth Wound - Aurora Mattia
Who Do You Think You Are? I Am. is a Perfect Taste Forever series about memoir and biography. PFT is usually patreon exclusive but this episode is free for everyone. patreon.com/sfultra I'm joined on this episode by Jolene, the host of the podcast When A Guy Has. We talk about The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia.
SFULTRA #23 - How I Killed The Universal Man - Thomas Kendall
"I'm living a fake, People say "You are entitled to and great" But I haven't wrote for 90 days, I'll get a good deal and I'll go away, Away from the empty brains that ask" - How I Wrote Elastic Man, The Fall
SFULTRA #22 - An Exchange Of Hostages - Susan R. Matthews
"I do not deny that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy everything certainly will remove some grievance." - Edmund Burke
SFULTRA #21 - The Physiognomy -Jeffery Ford
"...when I put on my holster, I put God out of my mind" - Cop
SFULTRA #20 - The Warren - Brian Evenson
"He did not work for posterity, nor did he work for God, whose literary preferences were largely unknown to him." - The Secret Miracle, Jorge Louis Borges
SFULTRA #19 - Overlay - Barry Malzberg
"Delight dwindles. Blame stays the same." - Briggflatts: An Autobiography, Basil Bunting I'm happy to welcome Matt on this last episode of SFUltra for 2023. Matt's youtube channel Bookpilled is one of the main inspirations behind SFUltra and his engaging, thoughtful reviews of books exactly like the one we're covering this week are precisely what makes him the best book reviewer on YouTube. Matt's
SFULTRA #18 - Ruination - Katie Jean Shinkle
"At the top of the hill You watch the world below Writhing with life You have two heads You feel one pushing out Trying to see Seeds Are planted In your mouth Whеn they bloom They burst from you Face Yoursеlf Your new Self" - Fawn, Body Void
SFULTRA #17 - Sweet Blood/The Birth Machine - Elizabeth Baines
"Sometimes when I get up and emerge from the mists of slumber, my whole room hurts, my whole bedroom, the view from the window hurts, kids go to school, people go shopping, everybody knows where to go, only I don't know where I want to go..." - Bohumil Hrabal, Total Fears: Selected Letters to Dubenka
SFULTRA #16 - Revival - Stephen King
"Death's meaning I cannot read. To me death is above all things a smell, a very bad smell, and that, like the skeletons which terrify children, is not death at all. If I had to smell it more often, if I had to work in the catacombs, I would think nothing of it. And a few years or decades from now, I will think nothing about everything." - William T. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Though
SKULL FRICTION ULTRA - The Magician - Christopher Zeischegg
"The relation between God and human beings is often mediated by the sign of the weapon" - Elaine Scarry
SFULTRA #15 - The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers
"All alone at the '64 World's Fair Eighty dolls yelling "Small girl after all" Who was at the DuPont Pavilion? Why was the bench still warm? Who had been there?" - They Might Be Giants, Ana Ng
SFULTRA #14 - I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman
"Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused -- he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would
SFULTRA #13 - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanisław Lem
There's something they aren't telling us. Something we don't know about. There's more to it. There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It's the sum total of all the things they aren't telling us. –David Ferrie in Don DeLillo's Libra (1988)
Murder House Sold #5 - The larger the prisoner's pain, the larger the torturer's world.
I'm happy to welcome Astrid Rose on this fifth episode of Murder House Sold, a Perfect Taste Forever miniseries about True Crime. We talk about Gordon Burn's Happy Like Murderers, a book about Fred and Rose West. Annoyingly, Astrid is an amazing writer of both horror fiction and criticism. She is also the co-host of Live At The Death Factory, the only perfect podcast ever to exist. Most re
SFULTRA #12 - The Employees - Olga Ravn
"Art is creation in response to lack. Quite different from a stand-in for the archetype, which must be there, somewhere, the art object is a kind of fetish, a replacement for some real thing that is missing." - Mike Kelley
SFULTRA #11 - Cleansed - Sarah Kane
"Rattled by and by As if someone was right Drawn and downed Indifference stands But a light from deep It glows They must have seen it too Rattled" - Scald Scar of Water, Altar of Plagues
Murder House Sold #2 - "...in cold blood with not a bother on him"
I'm happy to welcome Mark O'Connell on this second episode of Murder House Sold, a Perfect Taste Forever miniseries about True Crime, to talk about his new book A Thread Of Violence. Mark's a fantastic author and journalist whose previous books To Be a Machine and Notes From The Apocalypse are both remarkable examinations of grim insistence entropy can be defied. Ultimately along the same lines, h
SFULTRA #10 - Ice - Anna Kavan
"I know that. The difference between male and female perversion. The action of the man is directed toward a symbol, not himself. The woman acts against herself." - In the Cut, Susanne Moore
OhleFans - The Age Of Sinatra - David Ohle
"Ok, that's life, that's what I was told anyway And picking your feet till they bleed may only be the half of it If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle Perhaps every fourth person is a dumb fuck Listen, listen carefully now here's the answer It rhymes with 'axe' Why...it's those personal acts of course Those personal acts Those suicide pacts Those carelessly stored razorblades in the hand
Ohle? Olé Olé - Motorman - David Ohle
"Well, they called me a little so and so and so Yeah? Now they're hummin' a different tune Oh, this is a job for a stupid man Smoke it down to the filter and put it out on your hand" - Glamorous, Jesus Lizard
SFULTRA #9 - We Who Are About To... - Joanna Russ
"The streets were empty as I drove home, the air was cool and the sky was dark Streetlamps cast their mockery of light over ghostly shapes in an empty night Should I believe in the things I see? Am I in you, are you in me? What should I believe? Tell me, what should I believe? At home, on the porch, the wind in the trees murmured a background for my waking dream Where I drive through a city wit
SFULTRA #8 - I, Vampire - Jody Scott
"Besides myself, the basement is totally empty. It is dark and musty. It serves no purpose. And yet the entire world is down here, the whole universe" - Down Here, Bosse-De-Nage
SFULTRA #7 - Babel-17 - Samuel R Delany
"If I'm the talker, here's the thing Just who the hell is listening? And if I am not tongue but ears Then whose voice is it that I hear? I swallow, choke, and clear my throat Here comes another anecdote A narrative of restlessness Of what's been done and what is next Does it love me, does it not? Will this seduction never stop? Hear the clacking parrot's beak That speaks and speaks and speaks and
SFULTRA #6 - The Dispossessed - Ursula K Le Guin
"Well, is it true what they say about it? You oughta do what I do and doubt it He won and now he's gonna do something about it Ain't it sad? And if you don't wanna feel like a putz Collect the clues and connect the dots You'll see the pattern that is bursting your bubble And it's bad See the idiot walk See the idiot talk See the idiot chalk up his name on the blackboard They say, "this is all
SFULTRA #5 - Camp Concentration - Thomas M Disch
"A group of us, just strangers, got together and we formed a committee to discuss the problem, We talked about things like assured mutual destruction and emotional responsibility, I couldn't remember my name, so I called myself Bob, It's weird being a Bob, but i'll get used to it, I guess I'll fucking have to" - The Day Everything Became Nothing, Nomeansno
SFULTRA #4 - Rogue Moon - Algis Budrys
"And I keep on losing count, I'm the dumbest girl alive And I'm picking up the pacе, I'm so happy, I could die Put emojis on my grave, I'm thе dumbest girl alive And I feel so dangerous, but you say I'm doin' fine now Guess that's how it goes, I'm the dumbest girl alive" - Dumbest Girl Alive, 100 Gecs
SFULTRA #3 - Electric Forest - Tanith Lee
"The goal of the torturer is to make the one, the body, emphatically and crushingly present by destroying it, and to make the other, the voice, absent by destroying it." - Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
SFULTRA #2 - Doloriad - Missouri Williams
"Blood essence Order in the world now Possessions, a bow tied around the hair You let me cut, you let me cut Delusions, black out Arrogance, black out Delusions, watercolor Arrogance, blue skin" - Inner Controller (Lucid Running Home), Cloud Rat
SFULTRA #1 - High Rise - JG Ballard
"Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research. " - Industrial Society And Its Future, Ted Kaczynski
SFULTRA #0 - Why Science Fiction?
I try to explain why I've embarked on this project.
HOPDB #31 - Noroi: The Curse
Donation link: https://www.masi.ie/support-us/ Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deathwound/beyond-the-book-of-eibon A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #30 - A Record Of Sweet Murder
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #29 - Occult
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #28 - The Blair Witch Project
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #27 - Fraud
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #26 - Les Documents Interdits
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #25 - The Wicksboro Incident
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #24 - S&man
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #23 - Unfriended: Dark Web
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #22 - Murder Death Koreatown
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #21 - Spree
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #20 - This House Has People In It
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #19 - Butterfly Kisses
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
HOPDB #18 - Frat House
A daily podcast about found footage for the month of October 2020.
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