Tag: Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish (7 hours 56 minutes) read by Ben Tucker, for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Monster?, before 2014, her publication in famous fantastic mysteries, pretty good, not super well known, did you write it, different spelling, different lady, here’s a big novel by me, 8 hours long, a full novel, 3 and half hours is novel, people disagree, unplug and plug back in, decent, you liked it, good points, inventive, where to get there, that one’s not great, the recording, he’s got a British accent, most of the voices, competent, Ben Tucker is good, an interesting choice, a lot more acting, did you manage to see the movie?, this last week, last night, driving to and from some stuff, spoiler alert, a good werewolf story, Luna, more obvious, the werewolf is attracted to the moon, for whatever reason, fasinated by shapechangers, werewolves in particular, the druid class, into wolves and bears, Diablo, a werewolf or werebear, Brandytook?, lifted from Tolkien, our favourite hobbits, awith a swing of his stick, inventing the game of golf, the shapechanger, turn into dragons, D&S or Pathfinder, forgotten everything about this book, all the pictures, a hand of glory on the cover, scenes from all sorts of different stuff, the drivers died, irritating, big loss there bud, missed out on the etymology, fascinated by skinchangers, skinwalker, a [novel] approach, 4th and 5th dimension, a very strong personality behind it, the Saga of the Volsungs, oh yeah, skipped throughable, the video on YouTube, on archive.org, sort of worth watching, the book is quite different, 8 hrs vs. an hour, the last line of the movie, wait a minute, a weird joke to put in a murder movie, this book is all sorts of things, Oliver and Swanhild, she straps on her brother’s service revolver, WWI, driving almost everybody to kill themselves, the shaw, either Doyle, Professor somebody, or that lady, Doyle is Conan Doyle, with so much baggage, the subtitle of the book, Hound Of The Baskervilles, a reverse gothic novel, early Scooby Doo, old man withers!, the supernatural thing is always fake, inheritance scheme, condos, what shaw is, old english, a thicket or copse, what it is, context it makes sense, this weird dark cave, forested, a coppicing, a copse of trees, a forest cultivated for making charcoal and home heating, sticks of the right size, for making faggots, walking sticks, wand, a little tree branch, you can just substitute the moors, with the Doyle reference, a mystery, supernatural stuff, documents, the legend, a doctor showing up at Sherlock Holmes’ residence, the legend of the Baskervilles, extraordinary evidence, a response to that, a story by Barry Pain, The Undying Thing, contemporaneously, turns out it was first published in 1893, a chain, a feudal house in some part of England, the old English manor house, a family in decline, the setting is great, cool old things, secret rooms, mounds, guys who live in cottages, Holmes, Dracula, vampires, a series of RPGs, larping, Vampire The Masquerade, weirder, give me all the rules, five phases of werewolves, krynos form, the wolfman, almost pass for a really hairy dude, a dire wolf, loup garou, Norse mythology, unexpected but welcome, the twist, the dog is dead, maybe he’s not a werewolf, the first ancestor, still hiding, the Magnus guy, all turn into wolves because of crazy, if you have the knowledge when you are in the womb, before he had sex to make you, encoded in your genes, racial memory, scanned through it, as soon as she’s out in the wood, how come I know that, forgotten the movie, noted on a tweet, really funny audio drama called THE MONSTER HUNTERS, retell old movies as their own, 1970s groovy monster, Heir Of The Dog, a game on Steam, gold car, ache in my back, she’s playing with the record player, they are attacked by a werewolf, this is what inspired that, the tropes are there, scared to death, when John Baskerville comes, connecting these altogether, incest, old English families, keep it in the family, Swanhild is also in Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard, 1883, maybe it starts with a g and ends with an l, ghoul?, such a werewolf nerd, a rundown of the Saga of the Volsungs, the race of the Volsungs, an edda, the translation by William Morris, 3000 years later, reading Edgar Allan Poe, you fool, this bird is not a Raven, yeah, we don’t care, where Gandalf came from the dwarves of the hobbit, Smaug is not in there, Fafnir is a talking dragon, talking dragons are also shapeshifters, there’s just talking dragons, talking fish, dragons are men, they shapeshift because of their behavior, sit on piles of gold, kidnap maidens and keep them for themselves, a good king doesn’t sit on his horde, he has 1, if you are a bad king you become a dragon who should be slain, werewolves are something you do, you put on the mantle of a wolf, the skin of a wolf, something you put over yourself, you become a wolf’s head, becoming crazed, about to be eaten by her brother, the way the family will prosper is by eating somebody, conk on the head, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, brother sister creepin, Roderick young comes to visit, falls into a black lake, the background for what could have happened, heroine, really good at hypnosis, the gal Kate, still alive at the time, wasn’t dead yet, I’m a normal man now, did kill that lady, alone with only one other person, a thin explanation, believing in the rules of the thing, a GenCon viking guy, vikings and dwarves, beards and culture, the land of the ice and snow, Immigrant Song, really fun, links, the setting that it’s pulling from, a neat exploration, is it well written, cheesy stuff, the movie ends abruptly, the natural ending is about an hour before the ending, the lady detective wrap-up, some more hypnosis, better in its parts than it is in its whole, the giant man overlooking the estate, the first image in the PDF, made of the shaw, sort of symbolic, the giant man of Dannaou, ancient chalk carving out, horses or men, the horses are well regarded, genitals exposed, looms over the whole story, you’re Danish, I knew it, sloppy, convention stuff, a terrific Lovecraft connection, The Alchemist, an early one by him, little boy raised in a castle, near Spain?, no mirrors in the castle, part of the castle has been condemned, some kids point over at him, maybe he has a dragon head, this ancestral curse upon the family, the men in the family will die before the age of 30, they die from accidents, earning immortality, he has cursed the family, by literally staying alive to kill them, in the background of this, Paulo Coelho, The Lurking Fear, respect Lovecraft as a humorist, a journalist who goes to investigate Thunder Mountain, a family up there, under the right conditions, one of these cannibal people living under the old house, a big burly friend with lots of meat on him, CHUDS, Lovecraft is hilarious, Re-Animator, same joke five times in a row, so many cool touches, our lady detective, she’s there but she bakes some taffy and they make fun of her, not really the same character, she’s the star of the show, a Madame Blavatsky, her aunt, her lesbian lover, not a lot of homosexuality in here, this threat of incest, vibe based, you don’t remember incest in there, Stapledon, the guy who made the hound luminous, he’s married to the love interest, he wants to be the heir, he gets really mad, that’s find, simulated incest jealous, a kind of a clue, the Baskerville race, the Usher race, a brother and a sister, alone together, she has a boyfriend fiancee, we’re out of duty to not being incestuous, a childhood friend of the family’s, we were in the war together, another male character, to do some lifting, made the change, hears the howl, going through the moat, the secret room, he was much more dedicated to his fiancee, the fake arm thing, artifical arm, Thorin Oakenshield, Bifur and Bofur, Zipper and Zoffer, son of, Swanhildsdotter, fake arm saved his life, the movie doesn’t represent the book very well, too much to adapt, she’s such a great investigator character, Murder She Wrote but paranormal, he’s got a crush on her, such a Mary Sue for this book, she is having so much fun being the smartest one in the room and the love interest, her hero character, she brought in herself, kind of a witch, weight as much as a duck, extracted from the PDF, wit, knit, Hammond’s race shall live and thrive, espieth, dieth, worse than death shall be his lot, you should kill yourself, why did the grandfather kill himself?, he saw the monster, The White Ape, Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn And His Family, when we do a show on Congo, Michael Crichton, King Solomon’s Children, an Amazon delivery from Africa, kerosene, as you are a Lovecraftian investigator, the box was his grandma, sorta looks simian, he couldn’t live with the knowledge, racial horror, my grandpa used to work in the circus, restart the call, super bad joke, packed delivered, which is worse, in this book it tells you, a break, why that racial memory stuff needs to come in, under control when they had the knowledge, they had to kill, we just gotta eat somebody, attacked before the book started, the poacher, the butler’s worried, she grabs his pistol, reading it into it, laying it down, weird, fun, you shouldn’t marry your sister, on board the not marrying your sister train, a lot of characters, the least interesting character is our werewolf, our dude’s name being Oliver, Oliver Reed played a werewolf, 1942 movie, 22, 24, the reprint, 1948, Ben-Hur, a 23 hour show and a couple hours of talk about it, back to the werewolf book, a twist on the genre, the racial memories were weird, Danish Norse mythology, lycans is Greek, in Roman times, man in saxon or something, werebear, werecat, manbearpig, Saxon is German, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf, Grendel!, a good twist, hate parties, flapper dancers, false trails, a viking longship in a mound, the sword hilt, the background, the evidence that this is all true, complete bullshit, she does a lot of things very well, a preconception, word association, revealed, this is actually, false memory shit, demons, recovered memory, almost all of this is fake, hypnosis ads, quitting smoking, any phenomena that exist in society is either a threat or a tool, it’s not what we think it is, it’s not Mesmerism, the phrase hypnotic ability, a hypnotic disability, the performer up on stage, dancing like a chicken, those are plants, one way of understanding, cold reading, guy pretends he has psychic powers, begins with a G, he loved you very much, a scam, assistants, who travel around, fill in, become actors, a little bit like dinner theater, if you can’t juggle, often involves dominance of personality, the most interesting person in the room, the non-Vichy France, De Gaull was the tallest, if tall promoted more, you need to be seen, hire a dwarf, a commanding presence, submit your personality to that person, to regress him back through his ancestry, you want this to be true, confabulating, I didn’t want him to make stuff up, familiar with hypnosis, through hypnosis, the book is really good, an interesting departure, refind it again, cool, but incongruent, a little hard to follow, impressed, 40 minutes of the last hour, viking hypnosis, taking away his trauma, we’re all gonna watch Ragnarok together, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all this viking stuff, the rainbow bridge, the Norse myths, just watching the Thor movies, God Of War videogames, out of Greece and into Norse myth stuff, Neil Gaiman, Beowulf script, stuff going on with him, not sure we like him, he’s a good narrator, super-impressed, a good writer, Lemony Snicket, instead of Tim Curry, a retelling, having that knowledge, the reference to Wagner, Ride Of The Valkyries, tapping into the same stuff, the Ring Cycle, retelling, nothing new under the sun, all variations, quite similar to it, she has done a little thing, what I imagine Seabury Quinn is like, remixes popular things, Murder On The Links, Poirot on a golf course, nobody reads him anymore, not true of Holmes, The White Company, Professor Challenger, 4 or 5 of them, When The World Screamed, drill to the center of the earth, the earth doesn’t like it, a really good Doctor Who serial Inferno, turning people into werewolves, green werewolf, a mirror universe, under a fascist regime, eyepatch, just like the Star Trek Mirror Universe, they destroy the world, Stan Lee, they’re different, much more like a werewolf, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bruce Banner, cosmic, get a werewolf costume cheap, acts like a werewolf, transformed by contact, scary and fun, how it ties into this book, in the tradition of this Hammond family, the possibility, the accept it, they don’t cut down the trees because they’re not cowards, it’s a trait, they’re leaning into it, Teen Wolf (1985), Teen Wolf Too, dad’s a werewolf, terrific, he has it under control, keep that anger under control, Nazi Germany, werewolf units, fight to the bitter end, hide out in the mountains, run NATO for us, Operation Gladio, unwilling to submit to others, dangerous between the cities, like Robin Hood but in a bad way, turn werewolf, the North American wendigo, the same idea, you do this by having eaten human flesh, killing a person in the way you kill an animal, acted wildly, play on the basketball team, otherwise you might become a wolf, metaphorically, vampires work that way, a Star Wars reference, Wendigo in Marvel Comics, Alpha Flight, werewolfesque, Beast, female werewolves, types of mutants, Shaman, Puck, Sasquatch, a man of the woods, bigfoot, werewolf adjacent, an uncontrollable thing, starlight and pine trees, a lack of control, they don’t even realize, I didn’t realize I was a rapist, Seth Green plays a werewolf, interesting to think of how people handle werewolves, the player was in complete control, a special attack, he’s hairy, he heals, outdoorsy, he’s short like a Wolverine, 5 foot 2, the inbetween a man and a werewolf, the claws come out, Hulk 181, Ginger Snaps (2000), Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001), a frogdog, ERB enterprise, a six-legged frogdog from Mars, Odin’s horse has eight legs, a regular horse, in about 10 years, rural wild dog attacks, suburban?, clawed by one of these dogs, transformed, on her next flow day, the period cycle, not an expert on women’s periods, on the moon’s cycle, doesn’t track the calendar exactly, in men’s bodies, most animals have a season, she’s just a girl trying to go to high school, 2 sequels filmed back to back, solid action werewolf movie, you can do a cool variation, Wolfen (1981), a review of how good it is, the audio drama of A Princess Of Mars, $90,000, Bruce Boxlightner, Tom Baker, Sean Patrick Flannery, Tim Russ, nice and short, all 18 books, start another Burroughs series, submarine, lost world, The Land That time Forgot, Beyond Thirty, airship/submarine, savage ladies that need to be saved, The Monster Men, artificial men, he’s really good, Tarzan Of The Apes, The Return Of Tarzan, first went full Burroughs, his origin story, in America, follows Jane back to America, Clayton, still engaged, gets on a steamship and runs into communist spies, gets to Paris, a Rue Morgue thing, maybe it is you King Of The Jungle, an Arab princes, a stolen stallion, lion hunt, pirates, a lost colony of Atlantis, women are super-duper-hot, a lot of treasure, super-hot sacrificing priestesses, the craziest novel, heavily serialized, The Cave Girl, a nebbish guy, just read books, from Boston, she’s adopted, washed up, French baroness, under her tutelage, they’re all good, back a little bit, wrapped up with a bow, he torches her career, she hid evidence right from the beginning, the most cringey scene, that makes you better, that meme going around, that meme going around, the male fantasy, the female fantasy, the midwit, the idiot and the supersmart guy, Strange Tales magazine, two ladies asking for Robert E. Howard, what’s supposed to be male fantasy, you just have a good enough lens on this, this book is so girl, too long, there’s a lot going on, the archaeological dig, let’s look for papers around the house, stuffing out of the couches, funny stuff, you can’t put it in a movie, described in some detail, offstage, some couches, got his dictionaries out, swam in the moat, they’re treating it like its a serious mystery, a very self-aware book, a little bit like they’re in an RPG, literally how Dungeons & Dragons came to be, I want to have my own character, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are D&D characters, big into D&D, walking home from school, storytelling and coming up with interesting scenarios, the diceless part of it, some of the funnest fun books, Choose Your Own Adventure, theater of the mind D&D, this level of detail in the narrative, remember the time we tore these couches apart, as a pure narrative, she needed an editor, novel length, one aspect of the book, the scurrilous journalism in the background, and tourism, they sorta solve it, the sister gets a telegram, a substantial sum, laughin, I hate being a celebrity, the paparazzi I hate you guys, the girl psychology is hilarious, a popular author for a period, in her time, she was not a Doyle, female fantasy, an interesting perspective, there’s a woman in danger, man, don’t run into the woods, dummy, the good reporter, recording seance, it was him along, the seance people, from Chapter 5, golden calf in Sussex, over the breakfast table, inflexible monosyllable, Providence, unless those poachers get involved, the Daily Speculum, funny newspaper name, afflicted family, taken in dense fog, larger than sacred edifice, mainly boots and blurs, portraits of the Monster, heavy type, bandied about, argued about in coffee houses and bars, their exact meaning, spicy murder or divorce, the Sussex Horror, Stop Press, snub them all, the drawing room, playing up the book as being exciting, everybody’s talking about you, influencers, fairly high tech, threw it back, horses, more Victorian, you don’t need that for the story, only if it helps the story, if it is a red herring, female service, being famous, they’re vampires, a really good find, the hand, missing his hand, the hand of fate, the hand of glory, learning about energy exchange, an energy vampire, sending out vibrations, a drug, fame and fortune, reporters all over the grounds, a much more literal thing in today’s society, any level of famous, people who work for youtubers, carry the camera, show off the new makeup, how is thing a thing?, that’s the world we live in now, a pretty fun book, two thumbs up, a solid B, book club, more critical, what’s wrong with this one, some Arthur C. Clarke, put yourself in the shoes of highschool you, The City And The Stars, where it went, the worldbuilding is incredible, a sad ending, ate Luna, we can never be together, maybe contraception didn’t exist, the Anglican church’s the Lambeth conference, gonna do two Robert E. Howards, pair them with other things, 2 desserts of the same ingredients, spirituality and emotional healing, move out of summer, other events, The Tower Of The Elephant and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, out all of October, Too Much by Donald E. Westlake, John Jones’ Dollar by Harry Steven Keeler, the first episode of Red Dwarf, White Dwarf, a Jupiter mining ship, 2 lower deck guys, eating from the vending machines, put into suspended animation, three million years later…, everybody’s dead, everybody died from a radiation leak, the last human alive in the universe, piles of dust, back from hypersleep, lonely and going senile, like Douglas Adams, a comedy, full of science fiction, the story should be over, back as a hologram, his own roommate back, every kind of science fiction there is, the shipboard computer, 2 pounds six pence, because of compound interest, Futurama does that, drilling to Hell, so lucky, you can watch Red Dwarf for the first time, some capacity in October, is this great literature, a good read, concerns, tropes that happen, inventive, the 4th and 5th dimension, human consciousness, she’s crazy, I’m a sensitive, I’m a supersensitive, Call Of Cthulhu style investigator, on the level, laughing along with what she thinks is very formal, playful, the most important person in my life, progress.

The Undying Monster

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #517 – Chinoiserie by Clark Ashton Smith

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #517

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Chinoiserie by Clark Ashton Smith

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Chinoiserie was published in Philippine Magazine, November 1931

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – READALONG: Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – Jesse and Scott Danielson discuss Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

Talked about on today’s show:
1967, a bunch of awards?, a Hugo, nominated for a Nebula, novelettes in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jesse’s gonna have trouble with this one?, lotsa things, may have modeled Jesse’s mind properly, “like”, Nine Princes In Amber, pile of audio, digital pile, read by Zelazny, an author narrated book, Harlan Ellison, Lawrence Block, the Amber series, A Night In Lonesome October, good reason?, the new copyright when they reprint it, a performance copyright, he’s an excellent narrator of his own stuff at least, the guy for this was fine, one mispronunciation, Shiva, Mitra, Robert E. Howard lore, the politics, the suppression, the whole conceit of the novel, a colonization of a planet, pretend to be the Hindu gods, the whole caste system, the demons in the book, suppressing the people and running the show, accelerationism, do we tell all the people about this technology so their lives improve, if everyone is gods nobody will be, everybody on an equal footing, this way to be better than everyone else, getting reincarnated, moving their soul around to different bodies, flippin their genders, making up Nirvana, slowly working through Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany, Gene Wolfe’s The Book Of The New Sun, hard to read, looking at a super complex object, appreciate it on that level, that’s an interesting object, complex and cool to look at, obscured things, purposely not telling you things, revealing things, little infodump, really interesting, pretty well written, a style a lot of people aren’t gonna get along with, hard to model the people of the period, the least there: when he goes to a town and sees a bunch of people lined up to use a vending machine outside of a temple, a dig at religion?, is the book about religion?, in the Catholic Church, in the Church now, not with this Pope!, people in the past who have used the church for political power, what the church is, the Hindu deities, Hindu pantheon, sorta retelling things, fantasy or science fiction retelling, is the planet that these guys are playing Hindu pantheon Earth?, the answer is supposed to be no, our hero goes to a new town, how to do your prayers properly, played for humour, something smells like shit, that’d be all the shit I’m keeping in jars, new device called a toilet, backstory improving myself, playing a game with the reader, being a bit provocative, that attack Jesse is about to make, it isn’t just the Hindus, the Buddha, what analogy can I do, pick a religion that nobody cares about: the ancient Egyptian pantheon, worshiping Thoth, when did that end?, well documented, super-super-horrible, approx 1500 gods, very inconvenient, the Romans had about 700 gods, a god for every river, every day of the week, Janus, tons and tons of gods, used to control people vs. make your life better, valuable about it, it is helpful, true because helpful, the words of Jesus in this book, a Christian in the last story, a populist religion, topdownism, it wasn’t the king, eventually that does happen, stop viking, not how it started, a secret religion, contrary and opposite to the Roman empire and the Greek religion, they are controlled by their priests and scribes, you need to learn all of this magic, The Book Of The Dead, magic spells, the ancient Egyptian deep state, theocratic agencies, controlling the person at the top and everybody else, how lawyers run things, if you can’t navigate the laws, Augustus is chief pontiff, the head of the religion and the head of the state, the priests are running things, keeping the pharaohs in a dizzying state, subservient to this massive set of gods, we never get to see it from the little people’s point of view, the deep state fighting with itself, John Brennan, the guy with the mustache who wants to nuke everybody, John Bolton, thousands dying with their decisions, the worst example, I am science, Fauci, when they’re attacking science they’re attacking me, that is not how science is, that’s spellcraft, I am in touch with the gods and you have to go through to me, all mistakes, slight improvements and slight tweaks, peer review, Benjamin Franklin, jockeying between transhumanist elites, a topic of regular conversation, change your gender, become immortal, download yourself into an ai, handwavium, Fury by Henry Kuttner, elites controlling little people, interesting what he did here, looking at it the same way, an interesting object, same territory, admire a lot of the writing, mythic event stuff, Michael Moorcock with Elric, a zoomed out quality, Sam woke up at the beginning of the book, a moment remembered by history, paintings, this was momentous, we need to document this, The Sword Of Welleran, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, a kid takes up the sword of Welleran, other statues, half an hour long, 8 hours, 350 pages, an interesting question to think about, should stories reveal character or show character growth?, the focus has swung, modern novel of science fiction, science fiction has become a setting, no character development at all, an H.G. Wells story, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, describing the place that he’s in, not the stuff being produced today, the older stuff, you can’t be nostalgic for things 300 years before you were born, Yama, the Death God, multiple names, fighting the assassin, that entire fight was amazing, the aftermath of the fight was amazing, become Buddhist, against my new mindset or worldview, he knew he couldn’t win, profound, beautiful, good stuff, why people like this a lot, star quotes around you like, things to like a lot, oh yes, he’s doing the thing, page 239, borrow unavailable, the fresh bitten thigh of a maiden, one ought to read this subversively, if you don’t you’re a monster, I’m a Slan, no you’re not, Beggars In Spain, I’m one of the sleepless!, the enlightened one, the goddess of night, Tak the Ape, the coexistence of the animal and the divine, like Lovecraft, not the Sam part, snarkiness, smoking, in that direction, subversive, do they smoke Marlboroughs or Lucky Strikes?, treating it kinda lightly, Dick did the same, Dick is a lot like Zelazny, co-wrote a book together, a sequel to The Man In The High Castle, Dick doesn’t do series, not able to do it, super-interested in religions, writing to the Rosicrucians, instinct, too much garbage there, busy work, when you read the words of Jesus, not legends of angels, not genealogies, he never said he was a deity, perhaps some will not agree, monotheistic religions, more conducive to human value, you know who Odin is, and Thor and his brother Loki, the Marvel superheroes, the adventures they have together, they’re a lot like superheroes, The Avengers, tied up in this book in a footnote, the movie Argo, Jack Kirby, Fantastic Four, John Buscema, other artist, The New Gods, superheroes that are actually gods, instead of Vishnu and the elephant god, or the monkey god, they’re NEW gods, like aliens, when he switches to Marvel, The Eternals, too painful, why people love Roger Zelazny, the best things, massively, 24 Views Of Mt. Fuji, By Hokusai, the new five, much less complex, family oriented, very different, the prose, archaic, old fashioned, just talking to you, very familiar, the 70s, fairly direct, The Turning Wheel, eastern mysticism, eastern religion, traveling for religious purposes, controlling people, nothing good, sympathy for Jesus, he isn’t trying to sell you much, it isn’t about enriching the pockets, or putting you under thumb of someone else, harder to do today, the ability to read and read the words, the encyclical, local language, Vatican II, a good move, pro-Vatican II vs. anti-Vatican II, overall a reverence has been lost by moving it to vernacular, the posture of the priest, facing away, worshiping with us, an impersona Christi situation, South American country, the mass, people who can’t read, the magic has gone from it, a reverence for the language, Harry Potter, Our Father Who Art In Heaven, memorizing the latin, the pater noster, just sounds, a series of sounds, what the point of this is, thy will be done, they may be pretty, no intent, alluded to it, hatin on Poe, American literary critic talking to Lesley Stahl, shittin on Harry Potter, maybe it will lead to better books, go on to Hunger Games, literally better books, capable of enjoying them, take some students to go see Harry Potter movies, the spell scenes, just Latin, it sounds interesting and magical, we only partially understand, the priests in Rome doing their holy stuff, chant, music, sounds beautiful, a lot of randos, music knowledgeable, ska has no words, musical lyrics can be incredibly powerful, incredibly inane, Abba lyrics, why am I having this runaround in my head, makes you stupid, something intitally outside of you, advertizement jingles, brain colonized by Madison Avenue, The Space Merchants is a central work, Taylor Swift, numerous commentators, writes about breakups, she writes a song about it, men are horrible, Halfway to Texas, a crazy little girl, someplace new, trying to be strong, whole thing is wrong, you held me back home, this is inane, useless, if you get some benefit out it, that would be punishment, deeply grok them, too simple, lyrics do matter, Sting lyrics, stories that he tells, exceptions to be found, not everything is equal to everything else, monotheist as an improvement over polytheistic, less subject to loopholes, the definite word on this, chemistry, valances, the periodic table, its based on a reality, how they teach it in school, the supposed to be result was, you didn’t clean your test tube enough, the flame close enough, make you conform and get your marks, confidence in chemistry, metallurgy, charcoal nearby, based in a reality, actual science, macroeconomics, no progress in macroeconomics in the last 100 years, truths we won’t factor in, access to make the purse strings open or close, super-evil shit, what is my purpose here on earth, Jesus has an improvement over anybody in this book, sum up the plot of this book: this old system of the elites controlling things and pleasuring themselves – they’re evil fucks, exploiting and denying, a fantasy, an evil fantasy, it’s false, Robert J. Sawyer books, downloading yourself into a robot, make an ai sound a lot like you, chemical treatments, biofeedback, adrenochrome, it’s evil because its lies, religious trappings, people pretending, actual Hinduism, using this framework, the answer is no, the book would have hit a lot harder, a savage attack, science fantasy thing, Urth, not on Earth, uses a name for Earth, we came from this other place, what his purpose was, religions are this, nothing more than this, a really interesting take, Lord Neriti, an extremely violent dude, it’s not that Christian history doesn’t have armies in it, Sam is trying to subvert things, that Jesus speech at the end, taken into account, the words resonate, they’re powerful, back to the stupid Eternals movie, close to 3 hours or 2.5 hours, at least 10 actors, the guy with the gold arms, the guy from India, the guy from China, came to earth to stop some demons, a more positive version of this, a superhero has to fight a supervillian, fighting a bankrobber and you’re Superman, Batman has to fight an ever expanding assortment of insane people, all the horrible Marvel movies, human beings watching superheroes fighting in the sky, we become observers of these lords of immortality and bulletproofness, alien invaders, all silly and stupid, Daredevil is a little more sympathetic, maybe it’s Catholicism or lawyerness, Batman’s fairly broken, he doesn’t have, progressed to The X-Men, from an alien immortal who is invulnerable, to a guy who has no super-weapons, super-interesting, little little kid, never read comics, Green Arrow, never went to a comic shop, at the corner store spinner rack, buying paperbacks, 8 years old, when science fiction became a real thing, original Mr. Spock, Star Trek, tv guide, wake up to see that every single week, minor Star Trek novels, before that, Dolphin Island, a library in the school, an occlusion, at 8 years old, second grade, The Three Investigators, no comics, missed Robert A. Heinlein as a young person, isolated in love for science fiction, conversations in high school, a funny book, into fantasy, when Shannara started, that list of Ballantine Adult Fantasy books, craft, quality, Audio Realms, that audio version, it had music, a book on Genesis by St. Augustine, symbolism and things we lost as humanity, the Bible was our common story, a lot of them are Christians too, Marvel or Star Wars, Star Trek, see what tattoos put on themselves, money is the driving factor, should have stopped, Thunderbolts* (2025) is good, the story had an end, the end happened, Asmongold, who is that?, what is that?, skibidi toilet, these are not corporate, they might be corpratized at some point, Colbert is cancelled, The View is cancelled, on hiatus, not an audience enough for it, the advertizing revenue is drugs and health insurance?, the medium, listen to the radio, sport radio, country radio, a huge sports fans, all the stick games, all the ball games, the Cubs won, did the guy hit the ball?, The Last Inning by Nelson S. Bond, old baseball player, cut from the last team where he gets paid $5 bucks a game, wakes up in Baseball Valhalla, the games are always good, in full swing, Twilight Zone in 15 minute installments, it’s not a sport it’s a pastime, the best episode of Deep Space 9, football now has taken that over, a football game on Sunday nights, MMA, boxing, conversation at work, football is definitely king, dangerous and painful, fantasy football is huge, pickem games, bigger than any other sport, the up down thing, soccer is a bottom up thing, you can play soccer in your backyard, you don’t even need a ball, not as dangerous, basketball you need a basket, you need a rock, rocks are cheap, part of that is participatory, they played it, in the United States there’s a lot of people who really dislike it, comparative, fits American psyche, impatience, clocks, things like that, 45 minute halves, 1 to 0, why basketball is an American sport, Real Salt Lake, she is done, why do I ever want to watch this again, 3 hours of football in which no one scored, anathema, hockey with regards to soccer, a lot more dangerous than soccer, there’s fighting, NHL, a very Canadian thing, Canadian Football League, frozen lakes, see themselves represented in it, go out on the frozen lake, need a pair of skates a stick and rock, top down vs. bottom up, dressage, horse dancing, a horse, a stable, money, stableboy, saddles, riding lessons, you can’t just teach it yourself, polo, like soccer for knights, the stick is easier than the horse, a space bigger than an apartment building, common experience, could have been better had it been a short story, unless it is radically changed for this, Zelazny is a series guy, what like what we see in Amber, not 9 serfs in Amber, sword and sorcery, Brian Murphy’s favourite sword and sorcery stories, Flame And Crimson is the book, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, there’s a pudding, a bowl full of pudding that eats one of the guys, Robert E. Howard, Black God’s Kiss, Dragon Moon by Henry Kutter is public domain, The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, Ill Met In Lankhmar, David Drake, Charles Saunders, Conan in Africa basically, The Shadow Kingdom, Beyond The Black River, Red Nails, Karl Edward Wagner, at this stage of life, The Tower Of The Elephant, everything comes up except for LibriVox, so fucking broken, enshittification, well done Cory Doctorow, Mike Vendetti, just recorded The Hour Of The Dragon, 3 where he’s a king, I’m a do em all, Jesse, didn’t understand copyright, he can do it and he will do it, gets enthusiastic, Sinclair Lewis, The Broken Sword, that first novel in the Elric series, the Fritz Leiber ones are not mythic, way after, the development, Fritz Leiber reads Conan in Weird Tales, him and his friend as the main characters, taking that dungeon crawl you see in some Conan storties, a team, a team-up, D&D-splaining, the party is Tolkien, they get the fellowship, warrior, another warrior, elf, dwarf, thieves, tpk’d, total party killed, only one of them is killed, Lord Dunsany stories, really cool overlay, a sphinx, that’s awesome, he doesn’t say what he’s doing, who killed chronos, The Nightmare Tarn, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, Howard at his most philosophical, at his most attack on the deep state, the progenitor of things like They Live (1988), really solid, weird that he’s doing kings, corruption from above, his letters with Lovecraft, civilizations become corrupt and evil, leans in and says yes, they’re evil and old and we gotta suppress this knowledge, a one way influence, his Solomon Kane stories, he’s a puritan, largely adventuring in Africa, voodoo men, this is pure evil, we must go fight it, occupy sounds somebody else’s body, here take the staff of Solomon, sort of part of my religion, a mode of that, a suspicion of magic, just fakery, People Of The Black Circle, a retelling of the Marco Polo story of the Hashashim,, reading things from 1000s of years ago, 1254-1324, a certain valley to be enclosed, every variety of fruit, most elegant, all covered with gilding, he kept at his court, 12-20 years of age, tales about paradise, just as Mohammed was wont to do, some four or six, the deep sleep, the state of stupor, delightful objects, lovely damsels, in Paradise, unwilling to relinquish, commands of their master, put death by these disciplined assassins, been exposed to the emnity of the old man of the mountain, fairly familiar, still in use today, it’s the guy who tried to assassinate Trump, evil company, super-evil, people still do this, government related, lonely needs a girlfriend, an operative paid by the government, let’s go blow up a bridge, 7 people in the van, the governor of Michigan, how do we end up doing this?, ply em with money and wine, this is how we’re told suicide bombings work, arrested, Robert E. Howard did a story on this, set in Vendhya (not India), sorcery circle, his magic is largely fake, all you have to do to survive the sorcery is not believe it is legit, a different way of doing it, fireball damage, Harry Potter wand, sumin exportorum, not getting wet, you have to play along, I’m damned, if you are not a believer, it’s an alien, kind of the same story as the book we read today, stapled to a couch for 1000 years, Howard’s a lot more grounded, The Vale Of Lost Women, a god from the outer dark, an alien, it can fly, it’s not human, not a Christian, what do these stories mean, what does it mean to wrestle with gods?, nice language he’s so good at in his poetry, less toleratnt for the stuff happens fantasy novels, a long way of getting to him being interested in this subject, playing a game with himself, readable as either science fiction or fantasy, his playing the game, starships and cigarettes, him breaking that, it depends, science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees, science fiction that is not the same, hard Science Fiction, The Cold Equations, that’s not fantasy, a philosophical piece of fiction, we have to think about technology, most of them are completely fake, a vaccine for a disease that doesn’t exist, a spaceship that needs fuel, bootstrapped to get to John W. Campbell’s, power like it does, you can’t just magic everything away, the reason we love Star Trek II, the reason we love Star Trek III is Katras, planning, remember, double eyelids, all well and good, that’s series shit, that’s not the part we love, we set up a mechanical style problem and think about , a really awesome thread, the problem with screen addiction is we’ve always had this problem, a dialogue by Plato, The Symposium, people have always been addicted to screens, cave walls, shadow puppets, magic lanterns, illuminated manuscripts, movie screens, talkie movie screens, just like radio now with added screen, home video game screen, cellphones with screens, picture of the guy in the cave, always has been, your body comes with built in screens, when we look at a screen, early science fiction, visiscreens, they’re looking at a television, you can see the world, submarines do not have any windows, how can you navigate without windows, actually going to build the Starship Enterprise, there’s nothing in space to look at, when a romulan ship encounters a federation ship they’re both right side up, listing, it’s all metaphor, we’re told there’s tech, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, without all the religious baggage, deaging cream, get the botox, deluding themselves, technology is the reason it’s not magic, another axis to put this on, Star Trek: New Worlds, set in space, phasers, not magical phasers, dilithium crystal, the axis of bad science fiction, each individual episode needs to be judged on its own, the giant with the giant cigar, The Doomsday Machine, Kirk can do these infodumps, the writer knows, they built a weapon so terrible, they’re gone now, how do you know that bro?, in 45 minutes, an awesome idea, it works as a metaphor, nuclear weapons, it works in every direction, it is important that Decker try to blow it up, the shuttlecraft is not the important thing?, Star Trek is coming The Tempest, from Forbidden Planet, added a secondary hull and some tubes, things that look like a transporter, operates the same way visually, imagine The Tempest is a science fiction, the no Kill I episode, The Devil In The Dark, don’t kill all the Indians, very good, Spock has another girlfriend this season, some other girl, the cartoon, is it science fiction, some of it is definitely, pick an episode, everybody’s favourite, The City On The Edge Of Forever, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, what time travel can do, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, let that lady die, hugs Bones, it’s philosophical, how time machines work, he gives an analogy, how do warp drives, bend the paper, snake oil to get to the story, if evolution is real and things go on as they are, the workers and the effete elites, that’s him making an argument, farther into the future, nothing really matters, a crab on the beach, back to earth, love is real, our time on earth together, two different things that are going on in there, three places in time, he leaves again, is he going to go see Weena again?, she ain’t that smart, not about time travel to the past, god show out of this, Lord Of Light, The Einstein Intersection, Aye, and Gomorrah…, heard about Thorns from Jonathan Weichsel, Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid, exists on Amazon, hippies had a new kick from outerspace, Reality Pills, pot smoking poets and musicians, lobster shaped giants from outer space, Peter S. Beagle wrote the foreword, poet, author, and musician, underground journals, new wave movement, Ray Bradbury, his good stories are good, the pirate site, Ten Years To Doomsday, reprint in 1977, an alien invasion novel, republishment, co-authored, misclassified him, probably not a book we need, a ton of fun, standing out as not having read, A Night In The Lonesome October, super-interesting, a request, he is pretty consistent, it’s pretty short, going to wikipedia or whatever, websites memorized, 31 minutes, something to pair it with, comparing the style as well as the subject, the Brian Murphy list, Eric Brighteyes, the main character, novella length, similar length to the Howard, The Barrow Troll, a comic, The City Of The Singing Flame, capital AND, Linortis Reprise, The Ship Of Ishtar, a show from 2010, podcast 091 – Oath Of Fealty, not a good book, the number one problem, 40 or 50 people, hear the idea, at least it wasn’t a huge book, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, The Great Brain, ya, middle grade books, he was really smart, your Encyclopedia Brown, exist outside of Utah?, the first house to get a toilet, charge tickets, he’s gonna invite everybody over to take a shit, making fun of his own book, Salt Lake City, a Mormon thing?, how widespread is The Great Brain, famous illustrator, The Return Of The Great Brain, real books for real children, not Edgar Allan Poe, probably worth finding a copy and looking at it, at the time it was pretty exciting, who stole my wagon?, this person has motive, the two first episodes of Bookish, the setup is pretty good, asks for backstory, we don’t know each other well enough yet, viewpoint character, spinup theories, don’t trick me bro, tried to solve the mystery, setting it up, Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes, who did the murder, a little to character heavy, the UK is going strange, a rebranded itv?, bathroom, save it in a jar, getting better, how am I supposed to take this book seriously?

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard and The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #867 – The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard (26 minutes) read by Connor Kaye (for Eldritch Archives) AND The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft (28 minutes) read by Scott Carpenter for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 54 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, both about 28 minutes to read aloud, something related to the meta-text, Unspeakable Cults, The Noseless Horror, set in England, why is it set in England, big old creepy houses, British guys, one of the stories today, set in England for no apparent reason, something about this plot, the only time H.P. Lovecraft tried to do Howard: The Quest Of Iranon, Lovecraft heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft wasn’t interested, he wasn’t commercial, Howard wanted to be a full time writer, have that as your job, died at 30, Cowboy Stories, Action Stories, it’d be good to have some beans, that successful commercial voice, Lovecraft wouldn’t have accepted the editorship of Weird Tales, this is the same plot essentially, a different storytelling technique, The Hound, two lovecraftian characters, an evil art dungeon, Manly Wade Wellman?, [Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long], black curtains, very exaggeratory, similar in tone to The Mask Of The Red Death, the plot, an amulet in a graveyard in the Netherlands, the monster in the grave comes and kills him, published twice in Weird Tales, The Fire Of Ashurbanipal, how Howard does buddy buddy, he’s Afghan in Arabia, Howard doing Howard, him doing Lovecraft, point to, teaching students how to write, Character Language Allusion Imagery and Message, nameless like the city, almost no backstory, with the Howard, British jerk, rude to his frenemies, rude to his servants, booklover archaeologist, more academic, a Fall Of The House Of Usher situation, we understand them both, the Lovecraftian scholar, he insulted me years ago, offering an apology, I’ve cleared my name on my own, runs off to South America, three month quest, the Doctor Strange movie, the warnings come after the spell, one is more homebodyish, I want treasure, Belloq and Indiana Jones, rivals, H.G. Wells and Jack London, muscular and fast, the Golden Goblin edition, riddled with typos and odd woodcuts, a parody of Lovecraft at that point, very different from other eldritch tomes, grimoires, less than 100 years old, some dude just wrote this, I studied all the weird forgotten cults then I was brutally murdered, found murdered, assembled, slit his own throat with a razor, The Black Stone is a real story, good painted cover, a purple velvet background, Robert E. Howard’s stories inspired by Lovecraft, these are really fun and interesting, basically the same length, the Lovecraft is much slower, a lot more dreamlike, artificial distinction, his dreamland stories and his cthulhu mythos stories, a guy who goes into the desert, crawls into a cave, horrible spelunking videos, head down in a spot, really horrible, in the darkness and suddenly there’s light, how detailed those murals are, conveyed all that information, he’s got timestamps, how does he convey that?, this incredible detail, a little credulous, depictions of funeral rights, a terrible accident or a war, these guys are immortal, That which is not dead, a lot of poetry in both of these, the text for The Nameless City, loose cable, the poet Justin Geoffrey, smashing babies against the Black Stone, Iram, the city of the Pillars, Sheba by Jack Higgins, a sucker for lost desert cities, lost cities are real, one in Turkey, ones in South America, ones in North America, the deep time of the Earth, an aryan mummy, of a higher race than the native indians, racial stuff, Atlanteans, they’re crocodile/alligator people, a previous species on the Earth, something very important, talking about Atlantis a lot, everything is old, no matter when you pick, all you have to do to push that number back is go out and look, not Mormons in space, the deep history of humans on the earth, there wasn’t always just stone age people, men think about the Roman Empire everyday, some of them are thinking about deep history, some scholar writing a book somewhere, Egypt is very obviously an older civilization, Honduras, Guatemala, got the wrong book, Heinrich Schliemann, cable broken again, not quite as good, finding these things, finding some ancient city in Honduras, didn’t find the inner chamber, how The Hound works, a batwinged creature, maybe that has happened many times, the hoofed thing comes and retrieves it many times, keep closing the door, the comic book adaptation, reading it this time, did you hear something?, a hoof on the roof, it’s Santa Claus!, an ox or a horse in the bushes, the final line of the story, an enormous, hoof, slimy, high pitched, a tentacle, jelly like bulk, Robert E. Howard didn’t quite make it clear, the Marvel comic book adaptation, a little frog hopping ahead of him, a separate from from the one he’s using as the key, crystal frog, a toad which hopped ahead of him, they show it, big splash page, jumping out the window to return to Honduras, interpret, a bad translation, they weren’t worshiping a frog, some god that lives forever, the mummy was its priest, the key was carved to look like a toad, a crystal toad, locked in the inner chamber is this other thing, call it toadish, an alien up there, a moon calf, carving it up like veal, try translating kimchi into english, sauerkraut, you’re gonna get something, getting it second hand, hears some horrible stuff, sees the wreckage, foul unspeakable slime, crushed and flattened, they lumber in the night, colossal wings, the meter and the rhyme, very sing-songy, alluding to something, written for this story, Justin Geoffrey is Robert E. Howard, layers and layers of literary stuff, the distancing technique, there is no medium between us and the narrator, we start right there, I’m right there, protruding uncannily, an ill made grave, as I cower in my bed, hiding under the sheets, elbows and noses, a shallow grave, this Howard thing, different segments of his poetry, The Children Of The Night, tread not where stony deserts hold, very Nameless City, why was he doing that?, is he like Tussman searching for this place?, it feels very dreamlike, there’s no evidence for it being a dream, in a style that’s dreamy, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, the city of Ib, the Nile, a confluence there, the striking change, in the darkness, suddenly he thinks he sees a light, the worlds that he sees described, they are always in light to, always light underground, promised this underground place, The Mound by Zealia Bishop (and H.P. Lovecraft), a collaboration, a mesa in Oklahoma, a headless ghost, dystopian nightmare of centaurs, a Spanish explorer, a nested scroll of what his experience was, slavery biotech, under the earth civilization, bio-tech, attached to opium drips, Xthula Of The Dusk aka The Slithering Shadow, something Howard is all about, even crocodile civilizations, down with these reptile people, some societal and environmental problems, why it is hidden from us, poetry injections, amazingly steep, Thomas More, a reservoir of darkness, moon drugs, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, the seas of death, how’s that supposed to comfort you?, what the mad poet said, couplet, comedic attraction, let’s do this, everyone warned me it was a terrible idea, my skin is coming off, sucked down into, the last 3 paragraphs, the grim brooding desert gods, what abaddon guided me back to life, monstrous colossal, when one cannot sleep, cacodaemoniacal, articulate form, the grave, strangely tongued fiends, the luminous aether of the abyss, a nightmare horde, the crawling reptiles of the Nameless City, the ghoul peopled blackness, great brazen door, how are we getting this story, hinting that he got out?, Lord Dunsany, a club story, pioneered that with a character named Jorkens, Fletcher Pratt, Gavagan’s Bar, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, invited Jorkens over for lunch, chased by a lion, went into a cave, how did you escape?, freak out and wreck the place, a silly joke story, the end of The Outsider, the tomb, the castle, over the landscape, the moat now a garden, why is everybody freaking out, the doorway is a mirror, I’m the monster!, now I ride the nightwinds with the ghouls, huh?, where’s the end of the story, the great brazen door, brass that’s been heated and colour distorted, Ex Oblivione, hates his life and wants to live in his dreams, in his dreams he finds a gate in a wall, how to find the key, taking more opium, get the door open, all of light, he finds himself dissolved, going to the realm of the Forms, until the time I’m placed in another vessel, the pre-heaven, reincarnation involves pain and annoyance, a low door, became dead, are we there with him?, a first person recounting of an event, he wrote it on a roll of toilet paper, Ms. Found In A Copper Cylinder, a ghoul peopled blackness, hail the rising sun, satisfied buy why?, balancing these two stories, love vs. like, prefer Thing, Howard more than Lovecraft, a sucker for the Nameless Cults, better with language, evokes so much, workaday, rushed through it, trying to sell it, the guy telling the story is fairly sane, the guy is gone, crazier more elevated language, it’s almost like The Nameless City isn’t a story, an episode of The Twilight Zone, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, a narrative from a perspective, this is all an analogy for our world, more of a Howard thing than a Lovecraft thing, The Slithering Shadow, the lady plugged into the opium, she’s watching youtube, she’s watching twitch, checked out, stagnating and dead, present asleep, it’s not like The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, almost more of a straight horror story, one of the endings of Re-Animator, they don’t like it, a dream fully detailed out, and then I was trapped there forever, we wake up out of the story, Robert E. Howard is way more explicable and copyable, much more like a spell we go under, very dream like, what can we learn from them, learn about these places, always underground, the conquistadors missed this, natives to torture to death, the more Heinrich Schliemann approach, the Temple of Doom, keep reading the book, bro, he wants treasure, he’s genuinely interested, our guy in The Nameless City, a compulsion, he has a camel, he has some tools, he came here, lived only in myth, the explanation is zero, a potion to save his life as a disease, a character with a personality, the swooning in Robert E. Howard stories, forget about character completely, C.L.A.I.M., real poets and fake poets, the language is just amazing, like a magic spell, each sentence builds the spell, visualize what’s going on, what is the message, read the whole book, don’t go messing in old tombs, a good thing has all of this, just dealing in tropes, the pictures, when you read a poem by Howard, sense data, just look at the titles, stories full of imagery, the colour of Belit’s skin, what the dragon looks like in Red Nails, he’s largely imagery, apparently it’s great, Jabberwocky, about nothing, means nothing, vorpal sword, the sound is really important, sentence patterns, the sounds of things, names, Tussmann, a funny name for an Englishman, Herr Tussmann, makes sense, he’s bad because he’s a German, evil because he’s French, the plot, that was fun, how he cast this magic spell, mesmerized by whatever it is, almost more like poetry itself, a Clark Ashton Smithy spell, story count, bang out stories in a week or two, each of these guys, all really into poetry, they don’t get money for that, got no money, just good will, why you doin it?, they loved poetry, people talking about writing on twitter, using ai to crank out, not for the love of the game, build my brand, that fundamental love of poetry, they don’t read enough, not absorbing this text for the love of the text, I played World Of Warcraft, muscle mommy, Orc City thing, that’s something, doing this wrong, his stories to his poetry, Clark Ashton Smith second tier down, better at poetry maybe, both of these are very good, they work together really well, reading them back to back, done differently, you can see Robert E. Howard put in some work, probably took a week, a lifetime of dream-journaling, one is a story and the other is something else, Howard trying to do something a little Lovecrafty, written a decade, Lovecraft doing Lovecraft, something off about this, this is him making fun of Gothics, the pirate one, The Black Stranger, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, the people copying Howard, I got an axe to grind, Howard doing an Agatha Christie, Howard is a great writer, so commercial, front of the mind, what are they buying, do we want adventure stories?, boxing stories, whatevers selling this month, I’ll tell you whatever story you want vs. I can’t be any other way than I am, Strange Tales, Argosy, Farnsworth Wright, The Sowers Of The Thunder, get paid $40 for it, one of his best?, is that true, top half?, not top 10, he wrote a lot, and he’s really good at it, Tevis Clyde Smith, a shorter and better story, stocked up, real literature, that sounds like a guy who’s proud of himself, July August 1931, 5 years of writing, he got better as he went along, Tamarlane as a fit subject for Oriental Stories, the best story by far that I ever wrote, judge by any standard, seemed to erudite for the general reader, correctly estimating his audience, the Seabury Quinn lovers, my audience won’t like it, too thin, also etc., no attempt at plot, usual stereotype, he could have had the story for nothing, just to see it in print, mid to late August, to Lovecraft, a berth there, yarns, thin plot and light action, formerly rejected it, in the final letter, March 1932, the roof business and the sowers stuff, quite a few praises, get it into The Souk, The Eyrie, better than everything previous?, late Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is before this, Kull precedes Conan, the last recurring character, El Borak, James Allison, Kull is 29, Steve Costigan, 29 and 30, everything is 29 and 30 for him, ludicrous how much he wrote, he wrote so much good stuff, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Tomb, when you see Tussmann do you say that’s me!, as a character, so obsessed with this, two lines and then runs off, who does that?, an insane life, skull caved in by a hoof, decaying estate, there’s no explanation, he wants the treasure, doesn’t care about his own reputation or name, the backstory is really interesting, having to had to defend himself, so random attack, the Nameless Cults thing, the fake book as a concept, the weird pirate editions of the books, making fun of Lovecraft, buy the Del Rey not the Lancers, so expurgated, allusion is a major factor, an Aesop’s Fable, no reference to Dambusters, no reference to Akira Kurosawa, the couplet that explains what the moral of it is, one and done and we’re done, the more layer of enfolding, a reminder about a story by Poe, The Oval Portrait, almost is all frame, a guy in Italy, just wounded, breaks them into a castle, food on the table still steaming, the wick is still smoking, they find the castle abandoned, turret bedroom, bandits in the original, surrounded in this round room with paintings, armorial trophies, beside him on the pillow is a book that tells you all about the paintings, a build up for the internal story, a painter who painted a woman to death, drawing the spirit out of her body and putting it in her into the canvas, sets up and ends, why lately abandoned, a rich deep interesting story about art, he talks about being wounded, Tussmann’s eyes blazed, shot in the foot, how did that happen?, sealed up chamber, the opposite of our unnamed narrator, purely by chance, a similar sort of setup, it just so happen, it’s a meta-story, the framing making the layering more interesting, no framing at all, comes to us somehow, storytelling, start as far as possible into the story, cut out all the build up, start with action, Basil Exposition come out to explain some plot point, Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves, you have to roll with it, not like Blade III, a tv show out of it, at no point does it slow down for the audience, buckle in, why it doesn’t resonate with a lot of people, Robert E. Howard is very good at knowing what the audience wants, force of nature vs. innate skill and temperament for it, doing it for money, Re-Animator and Lurking Fear, let’s get Hour Of The Dragon scheduled, going to the beach again, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, not on for Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, nominated for a Nebula, really short stories, The Horses Of Lir, a little later, a movie.

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard - art by M.S. Corley

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair AND The Black Abbot Of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #860 – Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair (28 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox AND The Black Abbot of Puthuum by Clark Ashton Smith (54 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
1950S, 1930S, fantasy and science fiction, a nice match, correspondence between Margaret St. Clair and Clark Ashton Smith, different, somebody saves somebody else, the way they are told, why did she tell the story that, resentful, the unnamed I, straightforwardly, the story is better that way, twice as long but less happens, what other connections do they have, sex and food and drink, food and drink and a lot less sex, a science fiction story about class resentment, a low status person upset, less intelligent than him?, less canny, less knowledgeable, naive, an ugly American, a sailor who has traveled all over the planet, how you act in Saudi Arabia, strictly by the word “information”, successful, a famous cook, makes recipes from the solar system, a really good sense of taste?, so full of resentment, on an airplane with a celebrity, docked two months pay, by being generous?, not mean?, a psychic, a comeuppance, has to go back every year and do the dance, porcupine people, hedgehog people, silly stories, with the lens of 100 years later, a little cringey, being a negro, overt racism, movement, timeframe, white people afraid of the black man coming and taking their women, mandingo, purple lips, red teeth, three inch claws, horns, a monster who happens to be black, an incubus, unnecessarily black, a multivalent word, an evil abbot, not even the actual abbot, we don’t need to collapse that valency, one is evil, one is defeated by evil, how this was constructed, a Robert E. Howard story, a Solomon Kane story, an evil innkeeper, lock this door, a house where they kill travelers, a Margaret St. Clair story that deals with the same thing, the Benders, kill travelers, a historical kind of thing, on the Oregon Trail, murdered their stuff is taken, are the incestuous, probably German, the daughter or the wife?, what you get in The Odyssey, cyclops closes the door and starts eating you, Circe, guest host relationship and violations of it, black wall in the desert, not a natural sudden reason, forced into it, she takes the agency and chooses the pikeman, funny hook or twist at the end, cut up his fingers, cheat each other, this beefy guy, the heroic work, he did all the stuff, Spanish for spoon [Cuchara], a big bluff dumb strong guy, wiry, D&D characters, a very D&D story, a oneshot, make the abbot a Drow, the dead one?, a black underground elf, African, they’re evil too, Drizzt Do’Urden, drow ranger with a panther, Gencon, a statue of him, super well known, deep enough into the fandom of D&D, R.A. Salvatore, accidently omitted Clark Asthon Smith, mini-quest, dungeon crawl, at the end of the story you have been entertained, that’s it, Peter Schmitt [@raskolnik2] tweets, precursors to Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, one of them gets eaten by a pudding, further adventures, disposable, go along and hangout with these guys, weird sense of honour about it, the dudes eat humans, serving them meat, strange meat, tuck in, they skipped the meal, they wanted to skip everything, the beer, chary, tasting the liquor, a potent kind of ale, baked meats that neither could identify, the effects of the ale, premature sleepiness, the eunuch, simba, enraged tembo, set in Zothique, dying earth far future continent, the black men come from the north, an inverted world, lamias are called out, he loves sex monsters, almost every Clark Ashton Smith story, fun while reading, insubstantial in terms of heft, ornate and pretty, a sidequest, shoot it, the animals are getting upset, donkeys and horses, is he bent?, the strange meats, constitution save, investigate, four pages of exposition, from the title of the story, slay a monster, boss battle, minions, the no shadow thing is cool, a ripoff of another story in Weird Tales previously, the same plot as The Tower Of The Elephant, a previous guest host relationship that went bad, stapled to a chair, a team-up, Conan and another master thief, shoot me again, a sympathy kill, kill this guy to help him, murder hobos, kill him!, he’s an evil wizard, sometimes the evil wizard is the good guy, misery unending, by the numbers, ornates it up, why did this story come into existence?, wanted to make a sale, enjoyed writing it, artistic merit, with the language and the immersion, a lesser artistic achievement, a prose poem, he loves poetry, poetic language, an ironwood bow, so cool, dark, incredibly dense, wood that will sink, why would you have that, material is superimporant to Clark Ashton Smith stories, enough description of the armour, chainmail and leather, enchanted arrows, bronze, acclaimed by bowmen, and all his brood, magic arrows mattered, special potions or elixirs, fell asleep, try to stay awake this time, the girl and him were talking, divide the girl, we worked way to hard for this and she’s way too hot, he shook the helmet vigorously, the forefingered talon, he’s cheating his buddy, dearly coveted index talon, what are you doing?, is she dumb?, is she not present, more of a chiding, they’re not bros as much as Fafhard And The Grey Mouser, the button on the story, endings are superimportant, inter-related, a lot of people on twitter talking about what science fiction is vs. what fantasy is, bad takes, fantasy and science fiction are the same thing, space and tech vs. swords and magic, an adventure stories, let’s test this theory with semi-random stories, like both authors, fantasy and weird fiction, main mode is science fiction, technology in every instance, a grandma who is on a return trip from Venus, a special spot nobody talks about, through the thief, bribed and studied his way into finding a forbidden city on Venus, a very Clark Ashton Smithy sort of story, on her way back the thief has a comeuppance, the sungod of venus, magics a guy out of existence, we don’t have perfect access to all of reality, worshiping strange phenomena not fiction, not wholly embodied in physical form, in the illustration, if you scroll down far enough, our cookbook writer being zapped for the first time, hedgehog guys, zappers on their heads, crests, even more technological than it is, tomato babies, discover in the story, the new novel thing, a really horrible tweet, too stupid, political compass with star wars and star trek 2 others some other fantasy on the other axis, a really bad way of thinking, the reason Star Trek episodes are good, later Vulcans go into Pon Far, space salmon, that’s the idea of that episode, his spawning ground, a cool idea, subsequent episodes that have that, facts about Star Trek lore are not inherently interesting, the idea that they’re going to explore, warp engines and transporters, when some idea inherent in them, split into 2 Rikers, what if your life took a diversion how would you feel, the transporter technology, philosophical ideas in a fantasy story, adventurey, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, how to be in the world, you exist in a place where there is a heartland and hinterland, how ought one act, from one cave to another island, how ought one act, lost the thread, rare for fantasy to engage to ideas of technology, Star Wars, second mode, replicator stuff, social science fiction, what if you live in a society that thinks everyone should have a good death?, submit himself to euthanasia, time for him to be euthanized, good thing or bad thing, philosophical dilemma, to get to that idea, Eric [Rabkin], along the lines of, what could or might have been, what could be and what could be the implications, what does it mean, a teleportation device, and human behavior, what does that implicate, exploring the human condition, does the fantasy story today explore the human condition?, explore sexuality, the most interesting thing in it is there is a harem that needs to be added to it, most interesting idea, here’s William Emmons’ little fantasy, a literature of pure craft, similar to literary fiction, what the narrative is doing, a very different mode from science fiction, joined at the hip, it’s metaphor, realistic fiction there’s no metaphor, Walter Kirn and Matt Tiabi, A Good Man Is Hard to find, a road trip, grandma in the back seat with some kids, an agenda, if I was a painter I’d pay that, racist, a reflection rather than a metaphor, a space sailor who goes on a space cruise, exhausted the entirety of realistic fiction, Ulysses by James Joyce, a roman-a-clef, every scene is paralleled, an interesting mode, Milan Kundera, realistic fiction is something, when Conan fights a god from space, that’s not the same as wanting to divorce my wife, non-genre fiction, literary fiction, in the book trade, market novels, an established genre, considered serious art, high falutin people, we don’t agree on what makes it good, a better wordsmith than Margaret St. Clair, sentence by sentence, better at ideas by a lot, obsessed with drugs, flowers and their relationship to sexuality, aliens that are not humans, they have some human like qualities, not considered intelligent, circles back on that, the official line vs. the experienced sailor, he’s the canny one, a third character, why are you so resentful, didn’t teach you this stuff in school, how much you don’t learn, bottom up education, top down on earth, kind of cool, very often the case, an aunt stuck on earth, a nephew brings her various plants, a response to the idea, eat whatever your parents give you, stole it from a chicken, the loss of the chicken baby, veganism, a science fiction idea, veganism, vegetarianism, health, things in animal foods, chicken beef or eggs, a lot healthier, kindness to animals, that’s huge, environmental, cow farming, milk or beef, methane, internal environment, external environment, third concern, it is cruel to be cruel, the act of killing, distressing to the animal, when these creatures are not considered human, eat their souls, the contract is not with them, it is with their governing body, the stewards of these creature, in loco parentis, the chicken dance, the flower dance, the point of the story, the heart of the story, what makes someone or something human or not, the constitution, not a part they’re focused on today, so messed up, women were not considered people, all personal, lust, contracted out, themselves lusty, personal stuff, not very high in the brain, literary fiction, double twinning, the semi-dead abbot, evil incubus replacement abbot, her own sexual desire, Clark Ashton Smith lust stories, lust goes in many directions, an exploration of an idea, an exercise in colour and scent, they don’t know what to do, ways of analyising stories, C.L.A.I.M. character, language, allusion, imagery, message, that is there life, allusion is the hardest one, on the planet, all of Shakespeare, the poems, how outdated Jesse is, that’s so old, how many things about, what words does he repeat, he’s great at it, almost always pointed toward message, she’s focused on some idea she’s exploring, look at this idea, what do you think of my exploration of it?, that’s not the best mode probably to do it, a fur coat turns into a pine tree, fantastical escape to a mirror world, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien escaping into a fantasy world, aspects of that, The Lord Of The Rings is not for the children, had an idea, a story for that language, create a mythology, specific to England, Arthurian legend, it’s England, there’s no Scottish hobbits, in the creation, fictional language, got so lost in it, a reason for all this language, a fun story for kids, The Silmarillion, in which to escape, Forgotten Realms books, Dragonlance, places to escape into, massive diminishing returns, Ringworld 1, Ringworld 2, 3, 4, use the one to escape into the other, very solid, you don’t need to have a series, the resentful sailor, so cozy, not really idea fiction, twig your brain, watching Star Wars vs. watching Star Trek, brain stimulated, older Star Trek, more recent Star Wars movies, does Star Wars scratch the same itch as the movies go on, the sequel movies, do kids like them?, the prequels, special effects, less for kids, the back stories, the sequels, Luke’s a bitch, Han dies, but Chewbacca gets a medal, go on to be heroes, the extended universe, an entire alien invasion, went and hid, like Obi Wan or Yoda, hermitting, Andor, the story of Stalin, historical fiction, empire people, everybody’s villainous, using Star Wars to tell a stories, light sticks, a sword guy, tricked with spaceships, that’s not right, we profit by trying to understand what makes something good, better and better at discrimination in a positive way, look for the signs, standard Lovecraft, standard Robert E. Howard, very flowy, you wrestle with Howard, you have to, the Kull stuff, not fully justified, his boxing stuff, his western stories, Ghost Stories, a ghost boxing story, he’s a really funny guy, ghost boxing, you get killed in the ring and you come back fighting, The Spirit Of Tom Molyneaux, better male role models, suicide, canny dude, sword into anything, there’s something there, what Lovecraft does that Smith doesn’t do, The Moon Bog, a pocket version of The Rats In The Walls, a story for St. Patrick’s Day, he’s dwelling on what it means to have a legacy you’re not fully aware of, race as a synonym for your family tree, mom and dad die in mental asylum, what does it say about me that my ancestry is a cannibalistic monstrosity, deep time and it’s connection to us, very unusual, Sadastor, Weird Tales, 1930, almost a prose poem, a fair lamia, above the sources of the Nile, the lamia was vexed, fearful of her lips, cautious of her embrace, mythical tears, the demon tells a story to her to make her feel better, a tale of sexual conquest through astral projection, he really digs lamias, succubus and incubuses, he has sex with her, make you feel better, a lot funnier, so silly, so fantastical, no humans involved, the luxury of luxurious things?, everybody knows she’s a lamia, hasn’t had sex in two weeks, Farnsworth Wright can’t do anything with it, Lovecraft Smith commentary, as hefty, horny and materialistic, haunted, one’s a drinker and the other isn’t, let him drink, he lived longer than everybody else, some good stuff out of him, the great appeal of his sculpture, back when he was alive, his drawings, his poetry and his prose poetry, hard to get people to do shows on poetry, epic poem, something of the Necromancer, George Sterling, an influence, why George Sterling liked him, A Wine Of Wizardry, liked to tipple, did him in, turn to my lady Margaret St. Clair, she puts soma in it on purpose, Lazarus, artificial meat, shown to me, this podcast, a topic show on something, what?!, food?!, in fairy tales people never say I love you tyhey just give you food, Ambrosia? [The Food Of The Gods], carnivores, all the meat is fake now, really good, speaking before a senate committee, the very idea people would consume the flesh of animal, really popular fake meat, cannibal, a replicant of human flesh, goes deep into us, the body of Christ, becoming divine, spiritual, H.G. Wells’ The Food Of The Gods, a giant chicken, The Space Merchants, aka Gravy Planet, grown in this vat, food is a technology, cooking is a technology, should we adopt them or not, ads for listerine and toothpaste and tampax, as a man, up in arms about it, yelling at people, a diva cup person?, silicone cup, a consumable good, use it over and over again, absolutely would not allow, the ingredients list, in Germany, no crap in here, processed foods, halal, their not allowed to put certain things into their foods, religious stricture, raw meat, raw apple, pay a little more, guaranteed in whatever way that means, sugar is added to almost everything, German purity laws for beer, water, hops, barley, sugar, that’s it, cheap, selling drugs, baking soda in your cocaine, filling it up with crack, fentanyl in their heroin, jet juice, sharing with his passenger, his zero-g hooch, his lips had drawn down in a sour grimace, a dose of picrin, so much worldbuilding, unpleasant memories, what had gotten into us, how the old man had felt, Tisiphone, a celebrity, fine emporium clothes, a wonderful batch of juice, biliol berries, martian fungi and grains, mangosteens, durian, cocla extract, away from the anti-gravs, cloudy peach green, under his bunk, diplitating kit, extraordinary, a man of taste, a connoisseur, a cookbook, you can’t eat the Jupiterian food, a moon, semi-electrical, tomato babies, what do you do when you’re at the market, an asian fruit, spiky on the outside, a really bad smell, a delicious taste, creamy and custardy flavour, very scoopable, asian watermelon, not everybody likes it, he asks about it, they pour him more, he’s mad himself, he seduced me, the narrator, what are you so mad about, McBreem, he didn’t mention me in the thanks section, Farquarson, he shouldn’t be as mad, why does this story exist as it was, some celebrity comes over to your house, he used in the movie, you’re mad at him, why this story is pretty good, cool tech world changing stuff, her interest in food, a fury, that fits, near the end, a non-humanoid species, Zink explained to him, the interplanetery, bindin’, a barrel full of nuclear bond glues, extract it, she’s very funny, a Star Trek solution, not word salad, technobabble, the way they wrote Star Trek The Next Generation, plausible, reverse the neutron flow, that’s not the point, the point is the idea, little subtle ideas about things, drunkard characters, the other fun part about it, he knows things, lovely jet-juice, the opening line, the ingratitude of humans, interplanetary units, fish a terrestrial out of water, a lucite spitoon, working class, breeding dachshunds, gardening, a rare bulb business, a classicist, wiccan, autobiographies, who is this author, introducing the authors, a homebody having fun at home, a retrospective introduction, the purpose of science fiction is to prepare the way for a global consciousness, good husband characters, married late, son by marriage, step-son, meet the author, 1947, Startling Stories, March 1947, hang on tightly, H.H. Munro, Saki, solid comparison, off and on, young sprout indeed, immediate cause, detective and other stories, rejected by a different bunch of people, a feeling that they cannot compete successfully in it, Kansas, propagated the carnations, low quality housekeeping, funny names for dogs, they have fleas like ordinary dogs, The Soma Racks, a sense of her character, shots fire by her in a letter to Weird Tales, Bobby Derie’s blog, June 1934, about ten years, another story by Edmond Hamilton, nothing but exclamation marks, flies in my soup, science fiction at its worst, a waste of space, vampire and werewolf stories, garlic is something to put in salad, a rounded jewel-like self-containedness, Jules De Grandin is a pain in the neck, Seabury Quinn, not what Jesse reads for, Fantastic Adventures, 1946, Rocket To Limbo, presenting the author, she’s got bangs, send a photograph, snapshots, airmail one in, meet a deadline, women liking to talk about themselves, fiction instead of fact, Frank Stockton’s My Terminal Moraine, Jules Verne, old Hugo Gernsback’s publication “Electrical Something”, science and fantasy fiction, “battle between worlds”, human interest style stories, turned to writing, “quality stories”, detective or quality magazines, the same kick, personal taste, a great deal of fun, gadgetry of super-science, the laws of thermodynamics, straight out of her studies, pet hobbies, carnations, flowering bulbs, financial hobbies, chamber of commerce, Richmond, California, if we could build a thirty foot wall, pulp writers, the big slick magazines, the pulps at their best, touch a genuine folk tradition, balladic quality, the slicks lack, the columns of The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, editors and readers, tough PDFs, some scans are not great, readable, small font, Frank Stockton’s, a moraine, the gravel from a retreating glacier, the Rocky Mountains, the glaciers carve the mountains as they push through, down towards the center of the earth, a river of rock, gravel, millions of years old, buried underneath things, a recently retreating glacier, found in the ice, show you what they find in the moraines of retreating glaciers, satchels that got lost somehow, Moraine Park, they look like a river or rock, terrible, not on LibriVox, sell Tommy on it, The Lady Or The Tiger, leave the ending off, what do you think happened?, somewhere in the east, obsessed with randomness, behind door number 1 is death, behind door number 2 is, half barbaric, half civilized, just like her father, she knows, what is behind each door, indicating for her happiness or her happiness, a quick death or marriage to woman who is not her, half jealous, half nice, character revealing, which do you think she indicated, so well balanced there’s no way to know which one it is, not insubstantial, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, another pair of shorts, record some stuff again, pleasantly surprised, the room noise, the narrator, daily classes, new stuff on LibriVox, more of an Alex (pulpcovers novel), a gold medal paperback crime novel?, new Arthur C. Clarke, adventure fiction with lightsabers, fantasy anyway, peace, pair something with Will, knowing what to pick, done in two weeks, two hours, Philip K. Dick, The Ship Who Sang, Ithaqua by August Derleth, sometimes he’s actually okay and good, The Snow Thing, The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, what would pair well with August Derleth, and then there were two, dm business, continue think immigrants are there to destroy my father’s mill, broadly not true of Venezuelan people, fleeing, megaprison, my favourite president, very Jonathan of Jesse, favourite president, kill the fewest, Carter killed fewer than most in recent memory, Mitterand, he’s dead, Macron?, executive branch, the king and the street, a funny weird twisted mirror, competence, not be focused on enriching a class of people who are not a member im a member of, things happening in the world, transnational people, abeing meeting in DAVOS, Bildeberg Meeting, annual off-the record, chattam house rules, Nayib Bukele, pretty scary, extracting slave value from them, Salvadorians, cutting down crime, if your news businesses, old businesses, French Guiana, Papillon (1973), if you had watched more movies, Devil’s Island, love me some human trafficking, late friend Gary, how to look for human trafficking, talk to the staff at the hotel and you’ll find them, southernmost key, Key West, Peter Santorello, Haitians, artists, a facilitator for ultra wealthy people to have fun vacations, aquatic sport, living his best life as he can, how Bryan Alexander operates too, Qatar, the best use of Bryan’s skills, kids not getting any tutoring, protect your time, drive down everybody’s wages even further, not serving the wrong function of your job, send French people far away, the guy is popular in El Salvador, prisoners, what’s going to happen there, bitcoin vs. regular crypto, Maxime Bernier, such a fig leaf, Wilfred Laurier, most don’t have French accents, also French, a way of keeping the Quebecois in, mostly a western Canadian, young manness, skibum, not working for Canada’s best interest, for Canada to live Canada must die, very silly, immigration, Alberta First, people getting upset, what’s the opposite?, fuck your country, middle class is kicked, not very American, or New Zealand, very pro American, Obama did the same thing, more spread out, copyright change, opportune, the federal employees?, Elon Musk, an Afrikaner, easier to get in, work permit, income comes from loans, a house of cards, still bombing Yemen, leverage with Putin, improving things vs. making things worse, an Epstein guy, Israel guy, look at the photos dude, pee tape, ideological affinity, mean?, lack of go along to get along, Ukraine invasion, the most recent one, it didn’t start in 2014, it didn’t start in 2021, use of military force is either good bad, liberate would be another way of putting it, North Korea invaded South Korea, puppet government in Ukraine, Syngman Rhee is a lot like our guy in Ukraine, the loser her is Ukraine, made the situation better for whom, also Slavs, Serbs, Poles identify as Poles more than Slavs, it’s complex, Russians in Ukraine, the Soviet Union, war is bad and kills a lot of people, Paul would have said, Putin could just leave, pretty true, Stalin could have just left Moscow, no holocaust going on, incursion into Kursk, repel the invader, what time you want?, 25 minutes to solve eastern european history, boistered vs. bolstered, similar, an alternative term, boisterous, colloquial English, Kentuckian, the English speaking peoples, WWI and WWII, the English speaking peoples, so many bullshit stories on when Canada became a country, we fought at Vimy Ridge under our own command, Canada is dead but dreaming, could be a good idea, triggered by border stuff, what nation states do, I like immigrants, I like immigrants too, successive administrations, cruel to them, using them as a tool, building a deportation machine, border security guards getting worked, get to the root of it, stop making people flee their countries, might not even win his own seat [he didn’t], People’s Party Of Canada, Canadian national identity, immigration, view all policies, platform, gender ideology, global warming, Canadian identity might be interesting, trap a Canadian, proud to be a Canadian, make something really funny happening, what makes somebody Canadian, not American, defined only in opposition, what are the French, what are the German, a sense of belonging, project, sentiments, trust and common understanding, gradually integrated, multiculturalism, the dad, Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s dad or theoretical dad, the Castro one is cute, much cooler than the reality, integrated into our society, with a distinct flavour, official multiculturalism, what’s unstated here, leftover fears about Sharia law, cult of diversity, pushed his ideology, extreme multiculturalism, quotation marks, no core identity, cherish and maintain, cutting spending, a lot of money in it, for every cultural group there is money available to help them celebrate, multiculturalism budget, Maillardville, Festival de Bois, party of the forest, innocuous, francophone festival, these precedes Justin, my son is Cuban!, blackface paint, tortieree, meat pie, pride is really scary, a sin, in the time available, gender ideology, next time, focus on the multiculturalism, in our time, a time thing, if Canada is a real country…, European identity, bicultural, binational, Upper Canada and Lower Canada, Ontario and Quebec, told you’re a citizen, Indians, First Nations, Native Americans, Amerindian, for treaty peoples, vaguely when WWII happened, voting, 1934, it’s weird, kinda makes sense, reservations, Canadian identity doesn’t exist, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, First Blood (1982), filmed locally, goes crazy, calmed down and arrested, 2nd movie, boss comes and says, prove there are POWs in Vietnam, a big thing in the 1980s, POW flag, the Vietnamese and the Russians have been using them for farm labourers, betrayed again, betrayed by the politicians, goes to Afghanistan, find him in Thailand, the gallant people of Afghanistan, a funny speech, super hilarious, he’s an Indian, they make him into an Indian, half German half Indian, he gets a bow and is riding a horse, Indians signed up for the military at a disproportionate rate, fairly accurate, giving stinger missiles, used against the evil evil Russians, it’s all projection, headband, a little stone piece of jade, you take home to America, really base cartoonist propaganda, Germand and American, a melting pot, melted down this Italian American into a german indian, sundered from the land, Americans are not Canadians, institutions, the German country is bigger than the country of Germany, their sense of identity comes from Julius Caesar, showing up and talking about what Britain is like, a fun riff, Heart Of Darkness, when the Romans came into Britain, this dark country, everything that goes on in the Congo, the story is told in the time it takes for the tide to change, is it science fiction, definitely fiction, is it horror?, horror is hard to understand, is it fantasy, with that direction backwards, the terror the terror, the horror the horror, more than one movie, dying words, The Horla!, The Horla!, The Secret Sharer, also him, who loved him, that guy Joseph Conrad, Robert Silverberg, we could pair The Secret Sharer with The Secret Sharer, was he slav tho?, immigrant from Poland, eastern european names, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, say their names right, Minnesota, Scandinavia up there, 1059, vikings fighting indian, runic stone found under a tree, did the go to Minnesota?, Kentuckian culture, really cold, Paul doesn’t speak to Will on bluesky, sad story, new Paul comments, hurt his feelings, gotta live with your choices, kicking yourself over and over, it wasn’t unreasonable, the irony, it all happens over hate for Jonathan, in disgrace, block for no apparent reason, Jesse is a lot, too many dms, at peace with it, suddenly change, beecome a lot less?, seems unlikely, new Jesse: a little, less concentrated, more diluted, new recipe, The Moon Bog by H.P. Lovecraft, ancient, nice illustration, fearsome region, all the peasants and police in county Meath, the frogs piping in the swamps, right!, it’s happening right now!, a nice guy to know, nice racist guy, just like Jonathan, funny tho, interested in understanding other minds, how dare you, sir!, he rhymed with peasants and police with county Meath, no one will stop Jesse, super racist, let’s read his stuff, quite racist, Koreans are pretty racist, Instagram, what you go there for, funny racism, kids are not okay, pressing the number 9, bye.

Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair

The Black Abbot Of Puuthum by Clark Ashton Smith - art by Virgil Finlay

The Black Abbot Of Puthuum art by Sergiy Krykun

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #496 – The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #496

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Nightmare Tarn by Clark Ashton Smith

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Nightmare Tarn was first published in Weird Tales, November 1929.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!