Edgar Allan Poe – Page 26

The SFFaudio Podcast #345 – READALONG: Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #345 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, and Professor Eric S. Rabkin talk about the Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.

Talked about on today’s show:
1937, Jesse has a radical thesis, is this book a true story?, I’m not really happy I just think that I am, Alice In Acidland, drugs, what do we mean by true?, arachnoids and ikthyoids, a summary of Last And First Men, the unnamed narrator, astral projection, the contents of this book, not history but a personal experience (of imagination), standing on a hill, an interesting fantasia, considering the size of the universe, Star Trek with Nazi costumes is possible and perhaps even inevitable, The Truman Show, the nature of infinity, an Italian who would be perfectly happy to use the word true about this book, “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark.”, bitterness, Dante Alighieri, a lyric poem, Olaf Stapledon was a philosopher, a blazing panoply, an image of the rose, OS, “One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill.”, an abiding faith, the original meaning of comedy, comedies end in marriage, sitcoms, both narrators acknowledge their psychological state, an exponential rhythm, overhead obscurities in flight, a Doppler shift, the other Earth, Bvalltu, a composite character, planets – > solar systems -> galaxies, a fractal experience, an encompassing wisdom, marriage as a small atom of community, spirit inhabited rock, a World War I novel, 1986, Eric taught Star Maker to Bryan, memories imbricated upon each other, the preface, Stapledon was an ambulance driver in WWI, looming WWII, militarism, seeing the sunny side of a ruined planet, Merseyside, too smashed up to really be alive, a 1930s novel, fascism vs. communism, how to organize the self and society, a secular myth, a shock to civilization, the cycle of mechanization, terrible mutations, the onset of the tank, a sense of horror, WWI and WWII as two different episodes, the Spanish Civil War, shaking off colonialism, materialistic industrialization, the only wait out is an act of faith, how can we not think of the Star Maker as a monster, “struck dumb with shame”, limitations of the audio medium, Bryan’s keyboard, C.S. Lewis, why C.S. Lewis didn’t like Star Maker, a Lewis-nemesis, crusades, the Great War on Terror (2 decades old), mindless religious violence, anticipations of subsequent Science Fiction, The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, two 20th century philosophies, Freud and Marx, neurosis and sublimation, genitals with sense organs, radio pornography, the feelies from Brave New World, crisis of labour, ideologies as philosophical artifacts, not Dave Singer, separated by space and time, supplementary parentheses, adduction of Christianity, three linked universes, playing for the souls of the creatures, a timeless heaven and a timeless hell, Earth, Mars, and Venus in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, suffering for the redemption of the Earth, explicitly not a Christian view, C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy as a response to a paragraph in Star Maker, all the Christs of all the worlds, “a basket of Christs”, this is Arthur C. Clarke, a tour of Science Fiction in the future, this is The Mote In God’s Eye, The High Crusade, the novel itself is a universe, cosmos vs. universe, Jesse’s theory about the Game Of Thrones universe in the TV show, what Clarke does this in slight watercolours Stapledon paints in bold oils on a massive canvas, Arthur C. Clarke’s life changing moment, copying out the scales of magnitude, Bryan’s son, encapsulating, it is Stapledon, Dante is Dante in The Divine Comedy, The Divine Comedy as political revenge, Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno, Stapledon is not a punishment guy, when Lovecraft looks out of the universe…, when Stapledon looks at the same vista he’s not as melancholy about it, The Cats Of Ulthar, contemporaries, philosophical horror, long distance psychology, like Poe, fairy tales, handling fears, we get to feel, this is an education effort, quite special, a genre issue, the roller-coaster moment, looking at the vocabulary, eldritch and ichor, lucidity, feeling, the etymology of the word “vermin”,

I reflected that not one of the visible features of this celestial and
living gem revealed the presence of man. Displayed before me, though
invisible, were some of the most congested centers of human population.
There below me lay huge industrial regions, blackening the air with
smoke. Yet all this thronging life and humanly momentous enterprise had
made no mark whatever on the features of the planet. From this high
look-out the Earth would have appeared no different before the dawn of
man. No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have
guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering,
self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

the stellar wars, too lucid for more tribal patterns, sympsychic partnership, angelic vermin, more real than all the stars, like two close trees grown together, difference can be strength, the Orson Welles radio version of The War Of The Worlds, versus the Martians our differences don’t make a hill’s worth of difference, The Lord Of The Rings, looking for the Ents and the Entwives, there are Ents in Star Maker, the holy sex transmission that never got off, the ships worlds,

It was a strange experience to enter the mind of an intelligent ship to
see the foam circling under one’s own nose as the vessel plunged through
the waves, to taste the bitter or delicious currents streaming past
one’s flanks, to feel the pressure of air on the sails as one beat up
against the breeze, to hear beneath the water-line the rush and murmur
of distant shoals of fishes, and indeed actually to hear the
sea-bottom’s configuration by means of the echoes that it cast up to the
under-water ears. It was strange and terrifying to be caught in a
hurricane, to feel the masts straining and the sails threatening to
split, while the hull was battered by the small but furious waves of
that massive planet. It was strange, too, to watch other great living
ships, as they plowed their way, heeled over, adjusted the set of their
yellow or russet sails to the wind’s variations; and very strange it was
to realize that these were not man-made objects but themselves conscious
and purposeful.

Sometimes we saw two of the living ships fighting, tearing at one
another’s sails with snake-like tentacles, stabbing at one another’s
soft “decks” with metal knives, or at a distance firing at one another
with cannon. Bewildering and delightful it was to feel in the presence
of a slim female clipper the longing for contact, and to carry out with
her on the high seas the tacking and yawing, the piratical pursuit and
overhauling, the delicate, fleeting caress of tentacles, which formed
the love-play of this race. Strange, to come up alongside, close-hauled,
grapple her to one’s flank, and board her with sexual invasion. It was
charming, too, to see a mother ship attended by her children. I should
mention, by the way, that at birth the young were launched from the
mother’s decks like little boats, one from the port side, one from the
starboard. Thenceforth they were suckled at her flanks. In play they
swam about her like ducklings, or spread their immature sails. In rough
weather and for long voyaging they were taken aboard. At the time of our
visit natural sails were beginning to be aided by a power unit and
propeller which were fixed to the stern.

nothing like this in Science Fiction, Lloyd Abbey’s The Last Whales, an elegiac book, another sub-genre of Kindle based pornography, much of William Wordsworth’s poetry is admired too simply, Eric reads Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, the houses with windows like sleeping eyes, watching the lives of dreams, the houses are sleeping not the people within them, the smokeless air, lying still, what makes the beauty, The World Is Too Much With Us, a cry for God, Fungi From Yuggoth (IX): The Courtyard by H.P. Lovecraft:

It was the city I had known before;
The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs
Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs
In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.
The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me
From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,
As edging through the filth I passed the gate
To the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead—
And not a corpse had either hands or head!

deemed unfit, body horror, Robert E. Howard, M.R. James, ever more capacious mentalities, being taught by groups, the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Inner Light, The Horla by Guy de Maupassant as a horrible version of this, Passengers by Robert Silverberg, Boneland by Jeffrey Thomas, from a microscopic perspective, these things pass, bodyless timelords, a swarm of locusts, eugenics, Chapter 9, cultural and eugenical means, The King In Yellow (The Repairer Of Reputations) by Robert W. Chambers, the lethal chamber, Futurama, Providence, Alan Moore, criticism of Moore, turning everything Lovecraft hates into love, Last And First Men was a bestseller in 1930, the fifth generation, the Martian hive-mind, what is the moral ideal that Stapledon hopes that we move toward?, individuality in community, a literary allusion, a race on Venus, from epoch to epoch, that scaling thing again, the problem with fascism, fasces, is this a Darwinian book?, parasitism, symbiosis, evolution, Marx dedicated Capital to Darwin, getting rid of Harper, mutual aid, The World, the Flesh & the Devil by J.D. Bernal, astronomy, Peter Kropotkin (Mutual Aid: A Factor Of Evolution), mutual slaughter, profit in fraternization with the enemy, like Rod Serling The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, gentleness as a religion, the entangled bank (in Origin Of Species), functional stability arising out of local possibilities of violence, virtue in the creator is not the same of virtue in the creature, a third position, the sense experience of a star, in the center of this paragraph, free will and determinism are compatible, always bigger, a selfless star, the normal voluntary motor activity of a star, if you empty your ego and just feel others, perfect selflessness allows entrance into perfect community, getting your karma clean, dark matter, the science is pretty damn good, the key word is “lucid”, the vast emptiness enables the insight into the stars, rubies lay behind me, the sky’s familiar diamonds, all possible light, watch Steven Universe, ageless like Star Maker, the tag cloud, world and worlds, Oswald Spengler, growth -> change -> decay, the myth at the end, the course of empire paintings, The Decline Of The West, Arnold J. Toynbee, future histories, we could see if we were lucid, a great Götterdämmerung moment, the Russian civil war, The White Goddess, The Golden Bough, subsequent Science Fiction, for those who haven’t yet read the book…, the most disliked and most liked book, what kind of a novel is this?, an epic poem crossed with a lyric poem, erroneous expectations, feel better about your fishwife and your step children, back to Lovecraft, a writer of ideas, Odd John and Sirius are more like regular novels, Jack London’s Star Rover, more swords fewer wives, Frank Herbert, God Emperor Of Dune, when you frame it that way…, Accelerando by Charles Stross, full time IT professionals writing SF, Ted Chiang and Cory Doctorow, Ted Chiang can do anything, lapidary, Jorges Luis Borges wrote an introduction for Star Marker, A Story Between Jest and Earnest, Love and Discord.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #341 – READALONG: The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #341 – Jesse, Mr Jim Moon and Bryan Alexander talk about The Boats Of The Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1907, the publishing order vs. the writing order, The Night Land, more realistic and tighter, why The Night Land is so rambling, there’s still a romance element, The House On The Borderland, slash fiction, Mary, Job, Leviathan, the Wikipedia entry, science fiction, the alien flora and fauna, what the fuck is going on?, is this what happened to the couple in The Voice In The Night?, H.P. Lovecraft’s assessment, a romance in both senses, The Lost World, a lost world novel, The Lost Continent (film) is based on a Dennis Wheatley novel, the technical stuff, desalination, a fun mashup of Edwardian SF, the devil people, 7 year old “fresh” pork?, long pig?, Creutzfeldt jakob disease, classic horror, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the “angler” tree, decoys to attract food, a spongy fungal horror, must have fungus and pigs, a Philip K. Dick nightmare monster, we are totally missing a scientist, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, how The House On The Borderland uses a book to tell the story, Mary Celeste, what happened to the crew?, The Horror Of Fang Rock, sample wrappers as the leaves of an unbound journal, a soft chamois, the missing pages, the intertextual thing, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates, Castle Of Otronto, Frankenstein, embedded text, Melmoth The Wanderer, As taken down very carefully by his son, James, what of the Glen Carrig itself, boat(s), why this structure, here’s evidence we’re not all liars, random authentic, why does it have two boats?, what was the boatswain’s name, what was their route?, what were they carrying?, the mighty man, for reasons of decorum…, modern nitpicky things, Edgar Allan Poe, in the year 19__, the British were the last people to figure out the novel, Moll Flanders, a neat device, omitting the names and dates and places, M.R. James, Christmas performances, a novel of extremity, like a suspense novel, by crossbow or kite, bastard children and a shipboard marriage, in fact I applaud you, such as cannibalism, seven years trapped in the weeds, a fresh ham? come on!, an enormous supply of foodstuffs, Swiss Family Robinson, you could keep the pigs going, Metro 2033, mushrooms and pigs, Russian political satire, Russian political humor, pigs will eat anything, bread, wine, ham, and cheese, the 1968 movie The Lost Continent, so many cool things happening in it, a tramp steamer from Africa to Venezuela, lithium?, explosive when wet, a proto-disaster movie, in the weed lands, a burial, mariners from all different times (conquistadors), various barques, a Hammer movie, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, Wheatley was clearly a fan of Hodgson, Uncharted Seas, a noir-ish disaster movie, like Casablanca on a ship, again Mysterious Island, they hit a hidden rock, because it is told from the father’s point of view…, not a story for the little ones, because terror is not what the children want, an unreliable narrator, something that Lovecraft does, the effect something has on a character, the description of the weed-men is left to our imagination, “he was very disturbed”, when the bosun heard that the youngest crewman had forgotten an axe, the bosun as the steady-man, make work project, PTSD, vampires, Job gets drained, a disinterment from a beachy grave, vampire bats?, “the thing that made search”, priming us, audio theatre, it would make an excellent audio drama, weird is suited to the short form, a slur of a snake, The Haunting Of Hill House, the land of loneliness, The Captain Of The Pole Star by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a “pocket Moby Dick”, a mini-version of The Boats Of The Glen Carrig, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket, “tekeli-li tekeli-li”, aural ghosts, weird fiction, sanity blasted, how Poe ends Pym, why do we spend so much time on that crossbow?, reality vs. an adventure story, “I went below in a massive sulk”, what if the island was the back of a creature?, a blow hole of a giant whale, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Empire Strikes Back, did the Millennium Falcon it fly up the anus?, famous last words, very nautical, in the belly of the whale, EC style comics, a shipwreck survivor in a black cave that turn out to be in the belly of a whale, a happy ending, The Ghost Pirates, how can you go wrong with ghost pirates?, Hodgson as an SF writer vs. being a fantasist, Carnaki is sometimes a debunker, Scooby Doo style villains, The Hog, an uber-demon swine entity, what is it with Hodgson and pigs?, M.R. James’ phobia of spiders, dread specters, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, the beautiful images of The Boats Of The Glen Carrig from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, how the hell is this from 1907, set in the early 1700s, what Hodgson gets wrong, a careful 18th century novel, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason And Dixon, John Fowles’ A Maggot, Stanley Kubrick, a nautical doom metal band: Ahab, a weed-man hand, the horror of inter-species sexuality, miscegenation, not The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Sargasso style, Mark Turetsky, he’s porkist not racist, Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, everything that Lovecraft hates Moore turns inside out, horror vs. love, I get to live forever, I get to live in a palace made of coral, what Randolph Carter never got, the cosmic horror vs. the cosmic awesome, the hero won, The White Ship, his fishy glory, Guantanamo Bay style concentration camps, he loves being on the Innsmouth Swim Team, crossing over to Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Historical Society’s adaptation of Dagon: The War Of The Worlds, a San Fransisco garret, seeing it live in Providence, RI, the newspaper, really obsessive, the atmosphere of war, the weed men, the devil men, claws and tentacles, evoking the alien, more like Edgar Rice Burroughs, a great visual, the biggest cone hat you’ve ever seen, into the pit of sarlacc, so many good structural ideas, what you think is a liability…, animal skin hot air balloons, a noirish touch, why it isn’t better known, She, A Million Years B.C., At The Earth’s Core, ships trapped in time, trapped in the Sargasso Sea, tramp steamer movies, Raider’s Of The Lost Ark, Tin Tin also has tramp steamers, Captain Haddock, rife for adventure, more tramp steamer stories please!, The Sargasso Of Space by Andre Norton.

Sargasso Sea

The Boats Of The Glen Carrig (Italian)
The Boats Of The Glen by William Hope Hodgson
The Boats Of The Glen illustration by Indojo

Sub-Mariner, issue 16
Once Upon A Time, Issue 91, The Sargasso Sea

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #334 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Birth-Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #334 – The Birth-Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne; read by Fred Heimbaugh. This is an unabridged reading of the story (50 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Fred.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Pioneer, March 1843, a Hawthorne Poe fest, contemporaries, The Scarlet Letter, a quote by Poe about Hawthorne, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, well known?, why this story Fred?, he’s obsessed with sin, sociopaths, trigger warnings, neurosis, shame, luck, shaped by sin, a mark upon the family, subconscious Freudian messages, Commentary Magazine, Why College Kids Are Avoiding the Study of Literature by Gary Saul Morson, textual density, vocab, Lovecraft poems, Fungi From Yuggoth poems, harbours, kids are now shuttled between school the home and the mall, ranting against Hawthorne, The House Of The Seven Gables, revolutions in 20th century literature, Ernest Hemingway, the show don’t tell revolution, Hawthorne is the telling-est teller who ever telled, the right attitude toward sin, the two facedness of people, Hawthorne is attacking late stage decadent Puritanism, a homosexual vibe, what is the lesson?, science reaches too far?, Gothic horror, the evil wizard or the mad scientist, science as the channel to unlimited power, elixirs, potions, not even futuristic, Georgiana, Aminadab?, where is this story set?, Aylmer’s castle, Aylmer’s wealth, a compartmentalized life, from the third person POV, the host narration, obsession, the left side, the sinister side, she’s been marked, in the dream, chemical means, pre-Darwin, “I’ve got these old books”, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a natural philosopher, science vs. alchemy vs. magic, Isaac Newton, almost as if he was Ben Franklin, electricity, many suitors, Aylmer’s wooing, is Aylmer gaslighting Georgiana?, she’s reading, a Medieval heroine, a character of of Greek mythology, is a sex-change story?, is this a boob-job story?, envy, the tips of two small fingers, she’s compared to a marble statue, small pox scars, Marilyn Monroe‘s beauty mark, does positioning matter?, Supernatural Horror And Literature by H.P. Lovecraft, a meditation on obsession, many uninteresting analysis, so little action, beyond the sexual interpretation, Hawthorne doesn’t seem all that prudish, how far can you go in purist of perfection in a fallen world, a mark of original sin, wanting knowledge (of good and evil?), the sin of disobedience, Frankenstein and Aylmer are reading the same books, the process of creating a man in Frankenstein, the lightning bolt, Luigi Galvani, grave-robbing, Paracelsus, the gold thing is your way of getting funding, when writing a grant…, this might lead to a cure for cancer(!), alchemy as a religion, The Cask Of Amontillado, Eric S. Rabkin, “the niter, it grows”, Montresor or Fortunato, niter, growing human shaped things inside of bottles, poisons, psychology and the occult, the difference between alchemy and science is openness, the Royal Society, Harry Potter’s school, there have to be muggles, magically oblivious, J.K. Rowling, natural greed, the ethic of sharing knowledge, France’s version of the Royal Society, like the obsession with “open source” or the “public domain”, The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, sooo lifelike, sooo beautifully painted, Gothic horror, the evil mad scientist is destroyed by the power he unleashes, The Portrait Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, the ending, what is Hawthorne saying?, was Aylmer’s attempt doomed from the beginning?, Jesse’s mom, one of the most important powers of a teacher, she has “THE VOICE”, Muad’dib (Paul Atredies), Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field, a profound revelation, philosophy and critical thinking, vitamins are bullshit, fish oil woke Fred’s brain, North America has the world’s most expensive urine, religion wants you to take it on authority, bronze age holy texts, religion as book club where you only ever read one book (or just listen to a guy who did), cynicism or wisdom, loyalty to the organized religion of your family, inherited religions, fundamentalist belief systems, the narcissism of small differences, splintering, revolting revolutionaries, purity of doctrine, young earth creationists, Catholicism as an almost ethnicity (an identity), Hawthorne as a stopgap between H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley, the murky origins of Science Fiction, Dante, Lucifer frozen in the ice, a Gothic ghost story, Frankenstein’s obsession is with defeating death, too in love with science, Hawthorne’s message is like: “don’t drink too much”, Greek symposia, what really happened at a Greek symposium, “write drunk and edit sober”, The Odyssey, mixing water with wine, getting plastered is a sign on unmanning, the Greek obsession was with finding the moderation between too little and too much, what was Hephzibah’s sin?, her sin is being too worried about sin, “you will eat blood”, public shaming is a little much, be moderate with your casting of sin, John Wesley, a healthy functioning society, wealth corruption, falling into decadence, the protestant work ethic is kicking-in, Guggenheim, ransoming the grandchild, leaving it all to art, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Fred’s all time favourite Science Fiction novel: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, how do we raise the next generation?, a supercharged Kindle, matter compilers, Star Trek‘s replicator, eating green sludge, window panes made out of pure diamond, handmade hipsters, how you raise the next generation in a wealthy society, we are unimaginably wealthy, are Japan’s young people uninterested in sex?, Richard Dawkins on Twitter, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov, Gothic-y, Science-y, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, a great inventor, Neoterics, he’s stealing their ideas, the ultimate mad scientist story, following in the tradition, somatoypes, ectomorph (Aylmer), mesomorph (Aminidab), endomorph (Jesse), it’s a scam!, Hillary Clinton, the Ronald Reagans of the world, this is astrology, people think that once you’ve got a word for something you understand it, wearing the mask long enough…, IQ tests, quantification, any time we think we understand the most complex thing in the universe…, there really is a subconscious, tweeting dreams, psychology, the book club with only one book in it, The Great Courses (The Teaching Company), Eric S. Rabkin, survey courses, kooky specializations, the best way to learn, the perennial student, taught not to learn, philosophy of art, credentialism, Jesse can guess the exact words in a student’s vocabulary, guess your weight or age, how Jesse gets work, gaming credentialism, no high school diploma, a contempt for institutionalized learning, a play-by-the-rules personality, grade inflation, what did Mussolini do?, intimidation vs. cultivation, give the students the experience of reading, reading as a meeting of minds, defending a dissertation, essays, we’re obsessed with essays (for the wrong reason), ohhh spoilers!, the big problem with almost any media, “I don’t want to spoil it for you.”, testing is easier, a kind of objectivity, don’t blame the actors for shitty Hollywood movies, status is society, education as the cultivation of minds, there aren’t enough people who are willing to rebel!

The Birth-Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne - modified John Collier's "Laboratory", 1895

The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne - illustration by Lisa K. Weber

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #333 – READALONG: The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #333 – The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Julie, Seth, and Rose.

Talked about on today’s show:
the 1891 version, the 1890 version, Heather Ordover‘s reading of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, a rich odor of lilac, a saddle-bagged divan, Mark Twain’s A Double Barrelled Detective Story, making fun of somebody, a single esophagus, elaborate descriptions, oriental texts, the monotony and tedium of this kind of life, Lord Henry’s epigrams, entertainment vs. a savage critique of society, the dark side, being clever vs. delving deeper, Basil, sin, vanity, a Faustian pact, eternal beauty, beauty as inspiration, don’t say such things in front of Dorian!, the preface, epigrammatic writing, the trial, celebrity, the libel lawsuit, Basil’s trip to France, giving in to the senses, the decadent movement, turns of phrase, the cost of everything and the price of nothing, little witticisms, art and artists, the Gothic parts, those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things, taking the preface seriously, Edgar Allan Poe, should I take this seriously, the decline of the epigrammatic novel, linguistic sophistry, “all influence is immoral”, being immoral is fine, the seven deadly virtues, The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft, a wizard’s medallion, so full of ennui, St. John is a mangled corpse, devastating ennui, only the somber philosophy of the decadents, Baudelaire, that detestable course, Lovecraft’s response to what Wilde was responding to, the Black Museum, voluminous black hangings, the uncovered grave, just like Dorian Gray, another literary connection, The Great Gatsby, skeletons in his closet, the critic and the spectator, all art is quite useless, putting too much into art, the lowest form of art, Lord Henry never involves himself, Wilde can’t adhere to his own philosophy, putting yourself into art, the yellow covered book, he was poisoned by a book, swayed by everything, the book argument, Sibyl Vane, Juliet, Imogen, Viola, perpetuating Basil’s error, lots of cool things in it, the jewels and the clothing and the fabric, Renaissance poisonings, evil as a mode to realize the beautiful, so many good things to like, Sibyl Vane as a reflection of Dorian Gray, reflected suicide, Vane as a triple entendre, killed by her grease paint, the Yellow Book, Jesse loves intertextual things, À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, ten bound copies bound in different colours, double the amount of orchids and no white ones, every flavour of feeling and experience, indulging in every kind of experience, living your life as a piece of art, the Yellow Book rebound for every mood he was in, camouflage, yellow as code for gay, the yellow nineties (the 1890s), adding a layer, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1894, The Yellow Book (magazine), 1895, The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, symbolism of artistic movements, the vane family, Dorian as a byproduct of melodrama, an allegory for artistic movements, a reaction to Victorianism, reveling in immorality, a sin of thoughtlessness, eventually all that’s left is evil, the rage of Caliban, this is a really important book, the deal with the devil, super-realistic, a very constructed book, making a very real point, the second time Caliban comes up, the Lipincott’s version, the critics mostly savaged the book, then the preface as a standalone defense, the volume publication, edits, the second appearance of Caliban, The Tempest by William Shakespeare, Miranda, the beginning of chapter 7, the Jewish manager, The Horror At Red Hook, racism, a pompous humility, going bankrupt over a poet, anti-semitism, making fun of Charles Dickens, is it just Dorian Gray that’s racist?, the most amazing waistcoat, gorgeous servility, behind the scenes, the “Bard”, you can’t trust anything Lord Henry says, private letters, Dorian Gray starts to resemble in his interests and his appearance the Jew manager, ugly on the outside, overly dramatized servility, Mrs. Vane’s words, indentured servitude or genuine theatrical enthusiasm, wanting Sibyl Vane to succeed, you can’t trust appearances, the chapter about jewels, cloth, Dorian Gray is obsessed with exterior appearance, Fitz-James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, a microscopist, what you need is a diamond for your microscope, it doesn’t count, casual racism, this is why we cannot censor books, “man” instead of “Jew”, the hideous man in an amazing waistcoat, re-reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, we love them, in one letter, a massacre of Jews, Wilde loves to shock, Basil is who Oscar Wilde sees himself as, artists pouring things in to books that they can’t themselves see, an accumulated spackle (of censorship), Geoffrey Chaucer, Julie’s movie group, Philomena, what are we doing?, putting a taboo on looking at power, horrible corruption, Basil’s murder, first time reads, Lord Henry’s wife is named Victoria, why it isn’t called a “portrait” of Dorian Gray, The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, “It’s perfect!”, The Canterville Ghost as a redemptive and sweet story, an obvious homage to Mr Hyde from Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, how do you balance, looking at temptation, starting in a garden, the poison of the book, Henry is wreathed in smoke [like Satan!], something with strawberries, if this is a Faustian tale…, the issue we all deal with all of the time, The Long Conversion Of Oscar Wilde, flirtations with Catholicism, 1888, the very first book where spoiler applied is Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, we know about the painting, the scientist friend should have been named Dr Jekyll, Jesse watched almost every movie version, I need my equipment…I hate you, a later suicide, this book applies to the entire Victorian society, saying the same thing a different way, Sherlock Holmes, 1891, The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, The Time Machine, 1897, Dracula, The Island Of Dr Moreau, 1899, Heart Of Darkness, will the books of this decade be remembered in 120 years?, The Rosie Project, Fifty Shades Of Dorian Gray, are we sympathetic?, nudges, and the audio drama, will you stay tonight, the 1945 film version is very good and faithful, the use of color, fifty shades of silver, 1973 TV movie version (is on YouTube), Dark Shadows, Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane, 1976 version, Jeremy Brett as the painter, the 2009 horror movie version is horrible, Colin Firth, the niece, every Dorian Gray is handsome, too handsome, why is no one asking about his youthful appearance?, diet or exercise, male Dorian Grays, the Selfie Of Dorian Gray, modern gender views, really quite gay, Wilde, Stephen Fry, Wilde’s children and wife, the term “homosexual”, indecency.

A Portrait Of Dorian Gray from the 1945 movie

The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - illustration by Lisa K. Weber

Posted by Jesse Willis

a PATREON for Mr Jim Moon’s podcast, Hypnogoria

Sunday, August 9, 2015 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio News

My friend Mr Jim Moon has been podcasting marvelous stories and essays from the “great library of dreams” for five years. But he’s just now started a Patreon campaign! And I’ve just signed up to support his great endeavor.

If you’ve not heard his show, Hypnogoria, you’ve been missing out.

Mr Jim Moon is to the weird and the wonderful what Dan Carlin is to history and politics.

There has never been anything like Hypnogoria before, and podcasting is the only medium in which it could exist.

Hypnogoria is the most thoroughly researched and thoroughly executed oral history of the “weird and the wonderful” you’ll ever hear.

Here are just some subjects that Mr Jim Moon has done episodes about:

the history of werewolfery
the history of Hammer and Amicus films
the life and films of Sir Christopher Lee
the life and films of Peter Cushing
the life and books of Sir Terry Pratchett
the stories of H.P. Lovecraft
the ghost stories of M.R. James
the history of Batman
the stories of Clark Ashton Smith
the stories of G.K. Chesterton
the history of Halloween
the history of zombie movies
the stories of William Hope Hodgson
the life and books of Richard Matheson
the stories of E.F. Benson
the life and films of Ray Harryhausen
the origin of Alien
the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
the stories of H.G. Wells
the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe
the history of found footage films
the life and films of Vincent Price
the stories of Guy de Maupassant

and those are just the shows I remember!

Check it out Hypnogoria HERE and, the Patreon HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #328 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The White Ship by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #328 – The White Ship by H.P. Lovecraft; read by Mr Jim Moon. This is an unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 23 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Seth, and Mr Jim Moon.

Talked about on today’s show:
a Science Fiction, Horror, or Fantasy story?, hard to classify, Idle Days On The Yann by Lord Dunsany, wistful elements, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, a spiritual or psychological analog, a long prose poem, describing lands that never were, a lovely little tale, narrative isn’t exactly the point, the bird, the bird as an eidolon of the ship, the eidolon Lathi, Jason Thompson‘s comic adaptation of The White Ship, the ghost ship, why is the bird blue?, over the cataract, falls as if it wasn’t going to, the world ending, a description of Cathuria, aloe and sandalwood, an imagined land, dreaming Cathuria into existence, the sacred river Narg, Kublai Khan, a dream snatched away and smashed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe, Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe,

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

Lathi and Thalarion, Celephais, The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath, an old dreamer and lighthouse keeper of Kingsport town, fewer and fewer ships, a great delusional fugue state, a white spar and a blue bird, Polaris, a watchman in a watchtower, a beautiful symmetry, structural similarity, a beautiful dead woman, Eleonora, Ligeia, Morella, un-whimsical, Hypnos, the bearded mentors, astral projected journey, going to far, moon-beams, The Moon-Bog, a bridge of moon-beams, big ancient cities, civilization, you can’t have books without cities, lore x 3, he was given many books in his youth, when he was young and filled with wonder, Thanatos the Greek god of death, the throne of Azathoth, a dream of falling, the sin, Randolph Carter is seeking in the dreamlands, where the gods dwell, the gods have conquered, the person from Porlock, Jeff Vandermeer’s dream, William Hope Hodgson, fungal growths,

Then came we to a pleasant coast gay with blossoms of every hue, where as far inland as we could see basked lovely groves and radiant arbours beneath a meridian sun. From bowers beyond our view came bursts of song and snatches of lyric harmony, interspersed with faint laughter so delicious that I urged the rowers onward in my eagerness to reach the scene. And the bearded man spoke no word, but watched me as we approached the lily-lined shore. Suddenly a wind blowing from over the flowery meadows and leafy woods brought a scent at which I trembled. The wind grew stronger, and the air was filled with the lethal, charnel odour of plague-stricken towns and uncovered cemeteries. And as we sailed madly away from that damnable coast the bearded man spoke at last, saying: “This is Xura, the Land of Pleasures Unattained.”

The Valley Of Unrest by Edgar Allan Poe,

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
External dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

what the heck does that mean?, nameless things that feast upon the corpses of men, a large layer of death, allegorical symbolism, the platonic forms,

“On the green and flowery mountains of Cathuria stand temples of pink marble, rich with carven and painted glories, and having in their courtyards cool fountains of silver, where purl with ravishing music the scented waters that come from the grotto-born river Narg.”

what good writing!, Fungi From Yuggoth XVIII: Gardens Of Yin

Beyond that wall, whose ancient masonry
Reached almost to the sky in moss-thick towers,
There would be terraced gardens, rich with flowers,
And flutter of bird and butterfly and bee.
There would be walks, and bridges arching over
Warm lotos-pools reflecting temple eaves,
And cherry-trees with delicate boughs and leaves
Against a pink sky where the herons hover.

All would be there, for had not old dreams flung
Open the gate to that stone-lanterned maze
Where drowsy streams spin out their winding ways,
Trailed by green vines from bending branches hung?
I hurried—but when the wall rose, grim and great,
I found there was no longer any gate.

verse for birthday cards, The Haunted Lake, Christmas poems, a concordance of themes, all the shades of Lovecraft, The Picture In The House, The Bells, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the discover of sanity blasting horrors, ebbs and flows, soul and sanity loss, cosmic transcendence, drawing what we see,

“For the aeons that I dwelt there I wandered blissfully through gardens where quaint pagodas peep from pleasing clumps of bushes, and where the white walks are bordered with delicate blossoms.”

Basil Elton’s sin, distant whispers, really?, better than Sona-Nyl?, “Dude you’ve always lived alone!”, a sea-faring Tyler Durduen, a Coleridgian-Obi-Wan Kenobi, a big eastern theme, fantastical oriental places, like Narnia, Arabia mythologized, a marked contrast, Lovecraft as a homebody in the center of a great American port, like living in Atlanta and never getting on an airplane, Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, wherever you go, there you are, an interesting visualization, Celephais, writing down dreams, a penniless tramp, travels tell me, King Kuranes, his spirit lives on in the dreamlands, scented monsters, the basalt pillars of the west, Jason And The Argonauts, the Pillars of Hercules, Gibraltar, DC Comics, Thalarion and Themyscira, The H.P. Lovecrafts‘ song The White Ship, late-sixties hippies and beatniks, wow these are AMAZING!, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Providence 02 - The White Ship illustration by Jacen Burrows