The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #823 – The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft – read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (33 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
only credited to Eddy in Weird Tales, a letter, controversial, banned, Washington, D.C., Everil Worrell, a reading club called The Outsiders, censorship issue, one state, a different version, the Spicy magazines, if it had a star on the cover, naked ladies inside, a horror show, a really fun story, this is a comedy piece, a very dark parody of Edgar Allan Poe, monomania, a Poe like character, a very Lovecraft-like character, Eddy had some hand in it, not a lovecraftian premise, hiding or repressing the truth about reality, stylometery PDF, the curlicues, shook the story, the adjectives fell out, making the serifs more beautiful, a friend of Lovecraft, by Lovecraft?, drips with his style and vocabulary, moreso than the Eddy stories, structure and storyline, rewrote from start to finish in his own house style, the narrator’s school days, teased, sickly, autobiographical notes, The Unnameable, flushing the Poe out of his typewriter, looser feelings, The Picture In The House, blackly comic, massively over the top, Poe’s lyrical shrieking, ghoulishly, qually interested in male and female corpses, he’s necrosexual, dead is his gender, the transrainbow flag, leaves a lot to the imagination, it doesn’t tell you he is having sex with them, he’s hugging them, a vampiric addiction, alive and not listless when around dead people, the silly and fun part, unbased in anything, locked in a coffin for six months, grandfather’s funeral, he comes alive, no goth origin scene, so silly, writing the story on the back of a grave [stone], till he himself becomes one of them, I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, targeted within, they’re hunting me for my murders, The Haunter Of The Dark, writing to the point of death, pungent phrases, the brand of hell, I can write no more…, fantastic, recording this last year, a gift for a narrator, the literary equivalent of heavy metal, pick a random sentence, a lot of ss, crafting it, narrated by someone else, a sillier story in a different way, Pickman’s Model, the language is dialed down, turned up to 11 right from the start, operatic rather than realistic, pointing to the language, some of them are okay, pistol in his pocket, good weird tales, we get the word, tentacles, my thirst for the noxious, delicious, treading on dangerous ground, demoniac desire gripped me, Lovecraft pastiche, asexual, where this story diverts from Lovecraft, his stories are never about sexual desire, The Thing On The Doorstep, having sex with an ancient Lich, Suitable Flesh (2023), Dennis Paoli, Bobby Derie, a sense of humour, dry, dark ghoulish black humour, in The Shunned House, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Lurking Fear, rape, blooming forest, mushrooms with penis shapes, on board with this, sexual fetish, ancestry, drawn to an ancestor, 17th century gentleman, feeling displaced, The Outsider is not about sex, seen holding a corpse, take a vacation, you’ve been working too hard, fallen asleep on the slab, the guy who runs the place has encountered this before, a new twist on a Poe thing, The Premature Burial, molested then buried, further my acquisition of these corpses, he murders you then he caresses you, Re-Animator, sentence by sentence, wasn’t Eddy a neighbourhood kid, six years younger than Lovecraft, same neighbourhood, younger people, that grandpa thing, why The Outsider appeals, I’m not like other kids!, prose poetry maximized, I can give this a gloss and polished, even if entirely Eddy, Clifford Martin Eddy, born in Providence, Swann Point Cemetery, weird legal thing with his heirs, out of the public domain and into copyright, 1918, 1923, Muriel Eddy, women’s suffrage, my son is going to be a writer, The Ghost Eater, a 1924 werewolf story, sandwiches and a revolver, cosplay before Dungeons & Dragons, mary sue style adventures, as mature, Deaf, Dumb And Blind, also a revision, Ashes, With Weapons Of Stone, Theodore Sturgeon, one million percent memorable, in a different league to the other Eddy stories, so gross, pretty good for a story over 100 years old, another necrophiliac story, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, a dead Spanish lady, from the same period, molesting the corpse, she comes alive, overcome by the lust for the body, boss comes in, you’ve had a shock haven’t you, Pity me, reader, pity me, finished the job, I know I screamed, something fleshy, the boss, convalescing from a nervous breakdown, fear laden screams, awful awful, refused to believe me, strenuous work, not on the table of contents, age 15, so delightful and interesting, the imagination and enthusiasm, the gay lady who went to church, the worms crawled out, the worms crawled in, The Eyrie, necrophiliac stories, the entire subject, vampire stories, necrophiliac adjacent, long running dead wife obsession, out and proud, takes a lot of heat, a movie, a female mortician, Kissed (1996), fairly tastefully done, Molly Parker, a corpse has a major role, kind of an art movie, Lynne Stopkewich, Annabel Lee, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, incest adjacent, a maiden there lived, by the side of my bride, penetration, old man having sex with a dead child girl, pretty fucked up, an extraordinary story, builds back to the opening, no ghost element, quite the opposite, looking forward to being with them, more weird menace, using science, I want to have sex with the dead, it’s love, lust too, he loves them, so funny, I really like girls but they’re embarrassing, guys girls whatever, bizarre and silly, this is hilarious, pick some thing to be obsessed with, my bride’s teeth, serial killer confession, Maniac (1980), Maniac (2012), The Evil Dead (1981), Bad Taste (1987), cartoonish, gross or distasteful, so funny, look at me in this festering graveyard, no women, eat people, here to harvest humans, intergalactic taste sensation, Peter Jackson, The Lord Of The Rings wrecked him, The Stuff (1985), Larry Cohen, poorly put together and rushed here and there, satire of consumer culture, the menace from within, God Told Me To (1976), aliens pretending to be god, It’s Alive (1974), monster baby, Maniac Cop series, Bill Lustig, film festival in New Orleans, enormously fat, his legs, an eating vacation, a culinary place, dishes are huge, cajun cuisine, he would order three, a big spoon, three courses in one meal, an amazing eater, Bruce Campbell was cast to be the mirror of Robert Z’dar, his jaw grows too many teeth, played bad guys, the first one is good, people who survive the first one die, a new hero, he dies, playing with its rule, is he a zombie?, he’s dead, they didn’t think about it, it doesn’t make any sense, but the threat is real, the action is good, very legit, pulp fiction, the video store, get movies, carry a guide book, old movies on for cheap rental or purchase, you get a cover, about 90 minutes, a short story, not a novel, the same actors, the same images, a sex thriller, a continuation of the pulp genre in the video series, a Saw parody called Slaw, the devolved end of pulp, Strange Tales, mockbusters, Asylum’s whole business model, they made a hobbit movie?, Sharknado type monster movies, their movies are no fun, a tribute series to our guy Corman, his productions, puts value for money on screen, crappy concept of the week, satellites are in!, Death Race 2000 (1975), Rollerball (1975), Jaws (1975) spawns Piranha (1978), Transmorphers vs. Transformers, tricking audiences, VHS era, Smokey And This That And The Other, Emmanuelle series of movies, good movie vs. interesting movie, Frankenstein and his gimp suit, a comedic per-version of The Running Man (1987), sports are fascist, degeneration and television is controlling people, get points by killing pedestrians, the least good stuff in it, the kayfabe of the race, loving it, too loose, part of the fun of a b movie, intellectually the heft that it has is all in the details, an intellectual film, [Whitman, Price, and Haddad], Battle Royale, could the Loved dead be filmed?, use narration, an exploitation film, nudity, weird sex, bizarre stuff going on, a human love interest, a comedy no matter what, Stuart Gordon, Dagon (2001), Spain, feels broken, we have to film it there, Bleeders (1997) aka Hemoglobin, Rutger Hauer, changes, Nova Scotia, a Lovecraft story in California, jarring, valley girls vs. Cthulhu, ancestral home, what’s this drunk talking about, he’s got a Spanish accent, distracts, a limitation, the villain, The Temple, written by Dan O’Bannon, responsible for a good chunk of 80s and 90s science fiction, Alien (1979), Dead & Buried (1981), lent his name, as much weight as a writer’s name could carry, Lifeforce (1985), Total Recall (1990), Screamers, Terminator world, had a hand in, consistent, Blue Thunder (1983), it works, Peter Weller, infiltrators, claws, robotic drones, killing all humans, Jon’s World and Second Variety, one word titles, Twister (1996), a Michael Crichton project, a junker, a Burt Reynolds tv movie, Coma (1978), Robin Cook, Westworld (1973) was a novel he didn’t write, the all star cast, STEPHEN KING, star power, social media, from a communist point of view, redistribute, land reform, charisma or appeal, the same stars, the Ken doll, Ryan Gosling, Zendaya, Kyle Gallner, Red Letter Media Kyle Gallner specials, Dinner In America (2020), set in the 80s, where America is at, we know where we are, probably autistic, a quasi retarded girl romance, a ski mask, a lovely cute little romance with a lot of style, I remember loving movies, Netflix, get Marvel action star to make an action movie, a movie with heart, The Menu (2022), The Whale (2022), renting a movie online, too restrictive, sail the high seas, bro, 70s Spanish horror, mainly older stuff, the streaming services are quite bad, Tubi, Prime, Plex, links where you can find it, 1940, 1960, 4 movies from the 1980s, television shows, there used to be a countable number of television shows, there’s now an infinite number of television shows, how did that happen?, go down rabbit holes, the boutique DVD labels, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, rare and bizarre, pan and scan, so much better when properly restored, it has to be 88 minutes, silent movies, a hard sell, no silent film streaming service, a 70s action film, The French Connection (1971), let’s watch that, not what we’re being presented with, 80s blockbusters, Gremlins (1984), Karate Kid, long takes, a kid friendly version of weird menace, an end of the world movie, The Parallax View (1974), very modern sensibility, maybe the government isn’t working in our best interests, an election in the UK, Labour has the biggest majority since 1830, getting rid of the antisemitism of Jeremy Corbyn, always do the wrong thing, more of that is coming, a really terrific story to revisit, if it didn’t have Eddy’s name attached, all the Lovecraft stories in 3 paperback omnibuses, it did not disappoint, not a sentence wasted, beautifully structured, a great story to record, creep and gross people out 100 years later, literally beautiful, what Clark Ashton Smith calls Prose Pastels, it is a he, explicitly a he, does it have to be, mortician jobs, not a conventional job for women, he gets rid of his parent pretty quick, not an unreliable narrator, he’s hiding nothing, how much glee he’s having, silly fluff, the very tight structure, not a misstep, precious and very rare and very funny, well written, well structured, over the top-80s, RoboCop (1987)’s ads, hyper reality of 1980s cynicism, They Live (1988), you like Poe stories, you like Weird Tales, here’s one, you’ll love this one… to death, the subject matter, Kissed (1996) was done tastefully, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens Of Titan as a play by Stuart Gordon, Robot Jox (1989), doesn’t quite gel together, worth a watch, flawed, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998), based on a Ray Bradbury play, magic realism, fluorescent white, spilling tacos, delightful and beautiful, Fortress (1992), Christopher Lambert, what makes Highlander (1986) good, a sequel, Stuck (2007), why trash bitch, I’m in trouble I hit a guy, The Pit And The Pendulum (1992), Castle Freak (1995), The Unnameable (1988), and the sequel, The Unnamable II (1992), play well back to back, a sequel that doesn’t suck, space prison, a lot of fun, Escape From New York in space prison, Lockout (2012), Luc Besson, collar around his head blows up, The Running Man (1987), a funny and fun but not good Rutger Hauer movie, Wedlock (1991) aka Deadlock, he’s The Hitcher (1986) he can’t be a nebbish, Mimi Rogers, forced meet cute, why would they set it up that way, a bad sequel, set in future California, two likeable actors with an interesting script, run for 90 minutes, a checklist, Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff, The Terror (1966), Little Shop Of Horrors (1960), very moody, just that simple, all men on an island, No Escape (1993), Ray Liotta, sent to tropical island Hawaiian prison, rival gangs, does explosions, Benghazi, fights back against the discipline, Lord Of The Flies but an action film, my theory that humans are doomed to do the worst things possible, black and white ones, the Puerto Rican trilogy, Hell In The Pacific (1968), snaps, set in Cuba, a satire, the monster is fake, The Last Woman On Earth (1960), Richard Matheson, Creature From The Haunted Sea (1961), Battle Of Blood Island (1960), Poe adaptations, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), Cormania, somebody famous dies, 500 movies, A Bucket Of Blood (1959), a dim witted busboy, satire of art, great artist, same sort of vibe, a ridiculous premise and run with it, The Wasp Woman (1959), bees make royal jelly, wasp royal jelly, turns you into a wereladywasp, a really good job, fun funereal words, here at this farm, dogs, chickens, cows, throwin hay all day, rooster in the background, since Christmas or New Years, a four hour trip, all rural, not students in need of tutoring, farmlife, see you on the internet, Sunday afternoon, get two edits done, WHO? by Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon, science fiction version of The Man In The Iron Mask.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #206 – Pity Me! by Bertha Russell

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #206

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Pity Me! by Bertha Russell

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Pity Me! was first published in the letters column of Weird Tales, November 1925.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #511 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Canal by Everil Worrell

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #511 – The Canal by Everil Worrell; read by Wayne June. This is an unabridged reading of the short story (53 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Mr Jim Moon, and Wayne June

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1927, a vampire story, H.P. Lovecraft, an alternative version of the story’s ending, dynamite vs. a wooden sword, Wikisource, The James Dickey, white caps on the canal, low key, that bitch is getting it, where’s the dynamite?, no secret cavern only opened by a , have I got dementia?, the April 1935 reprint, the Night Gallery half hour TV adaptation, fix Skype, Leonard Nimoy’s directorial debut, shooting day for night, very dream like, 1960s westerns, as bright as daylight, Lesley Ann Warren smokin’ hot, so sexually provocative, her middle name is cleavage, drunk this other dude, red bedspread, evoking the attraction, essentially a skeleton, a heart shaped face, she’s bony, a very well written student, the amount of poetic techniques she uses, super-high level, I didn’t intend that to be poetry, writing a very long suicide note, all these ppp sounds, repetition, the last ravings of a madman, the thing I shall have done, where did the changes come from?, her father has a giant stake, stab me with your giant wooden stake, that’s a lot of symbolism there, do we think that Everil Worrel made those changes?, the whole heroic aspect, in one fell swoop, drama, toned down, beef up the ending?, paid by the word, a Hollwood Blockbuster ending, the camp invasion, bitten by rats, he’s killing everybody, do all the people in the camp die?, infected, he’s a little hard to follow, everybody’s going to die, whoever did this was a monster, a cargo of death, when she first became the thing she is, expiation, redemption, atonement, a very Catholic Christian religious word, it isn’t so much about the girl, the narrator is very Lovecraftian, he loves to be alone, not afraid to being hanging out alone in the dark, meditating in graveyards, night walks, driving out to the countryside, in Paris?, along its left bank?, every canal has a left bank (and a right bank too), fallen into disuse, the River Walk in San Antonio, “Morton”, Hyacinth is slightly better than Lily, she’s telepathic, his name is “Ron”, fishmongers, easier to fit into a half hour, some of the leaps, the 1927 illustration by Hugh Rankin, grease-pencil, a flapper haircut, a dance move, giant bats, “Loathsome shapes flapped through the night along the way that led to the pleasure camps.”, a roadster, a motorboat, early fall?, he’s already got a whole lifestyle going, that smell, what’s going on with the dilapidated buildings, these aren’t gypsies exactly, a recreational thing?, a portable brothel?, pleasure is a weird word, “She’s a vampire. A vampire!, VAMPIRES!”, the storm had a rock hit him in the head, feasting, the more minimal ending, we have to infer how she got there, she commands him to carry her, my father is deaf and he sleeps soundly, metaphors, he sleeps by night, not lying, you sleep soundly, a pique in my voice, always at different times, on guard, she ate a child, the father has to kill her, the father’s story, maybe the father died after?, imagining the backstory, lonely places, she’s an attraction he’d never felt before, a mossy gravestone, did the father invent all that?, global pandemic, I’ve read Dracula, Anno Dracula by Kim Newman, making explicit, one of the few vampire stories in which the narrator is familiar with vampire fiction, running water, the rules, meta-context, genre saavy, two different subgengres, a Robert E. Howard ending, the shorter version is rather Edgar Allan Poe like, which did Lovecraft read, a strong echo of Hypnos and The Hound, one is enthralled to another, ending in the night side of the city, where the nice people don’t go, so many echoes, a city at night, Fungi From Yuggoth was written in December 1929 to early 1930, The Call Of Cthulhu, maybe August Derleth “improved” it, The Grove of Ashtaroth by John Buchan, Dagon, the plunger, the plunger!, not better, more poignant, pointy sword, why is he carrying around a wooden sword?, the wooden sword, decapitated with a Bowie knife, a fudge between the two, The Canal by H.P. Lovecraft, January 1938, Somewhere in dream there is an evil place

Where tall, deserted buildings crowd along
A deep, black, narrow channel, reeking strong
Of frightful things whence oily currents race.
Lanes with old walls half meeting overhead
Wind off to streets one may or may not know,
And feeble moonlight sheds a spectral glow
Over long rows of windows, dark and dead.

There are no footfalls, and the one soft sound
Is of the oily water as it glides
Under stone bridges, and along the sides
Of its deep flume, to some vague ocean bound.
None lives to tell when that stream washed away
Its dream-lost region from the world of clay.

oil, inspired by Worrell, there’s no vampire lady, more architecture based than lady based, less Poey than Frank Lloyd Wrighty, no trace of oil, an image you would think of, like scum, mental oil, Richard Corben’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Canal, a mystery city, The Music Of Eric Zann, these mystery cities, a great name for a guy who loves death, poems with this imagery, a river, a canal, or a stream, What The Moon Brings, I hate the moon, The Nightmare Lake, the corpse of a god, a tarn, so brutal, the slime beneath the unmoving waters of the canal, a slimy muddy expanse, The Crawling Chaos, his horror nightmares, The Night Ocean by R.H. Barlow and H.P. Lovecraft, to rest a weary mind, the same psychology, The Lake, the most wondrous delight, which version, from Tamarlane And Other Poems,

In youth’s spring, it was my lot
To haunt of the wide earth a spot
The which I could not love the less;
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound.
And the tall pines that tower’d around.
But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot — as upon all,
And the wind would pass me by
In its stilly melody,
My infant spirit would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.
Yet that terror was not fright —
But a tremulous delight,
And a feeling undefin’d,
Springing from a darken’d mind.
Death was in that poison’d wave
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his dark imagining;
Whose wild’ring thought could even make
An Eden of that dim lake.

almost not dark enough to be Poe until the last quarter, a children’s book of Poe’s poems for children, Annabelle Lee, The Loved Dead, a ghostly couple hovering over that lake, two ghosts rather than one, place and fate, I could care less, which vs. witch, under a spell, wild bewildering, bound, Archibald Lampman, multi-valence, bound = tied up = springing = the boundary, this is a suicide note, his youngest young, solace homophone with soul-less, a very Poe poem, the horror of existence, the tremulous delight, that’s night fright or cold, that’s excitement, an amazing suicide note to give to kids to read, all the virtues of suicide, parent teacher meetings, no suicides yet, keeping things in the open, sometimes people go nuts, you need to talk to a doctor, the May 1953 issue of Weird Tales has a letter from Everil Worrell saying how much she enjoyed Lovecraft’s writing, The Supreme Witch, Slime is terrific, cosmic and spatial about the dark ocean, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, The Raft, The Egyptian, The Dream Merchant, agree with Lovecraft’s detractors, Lovecraft vocabulary, “foul mephitic vapours”, horrific ululations, it wasn’t so much Lovecraft did but how he did it, a really good mom, you can be a horrible monster loving graveyard sniffing weirdo and also be a good mom, it gives Wayne hope, you’re going to love The Loved Dead, such a delight to read, so extreme, its not going to show you, on the corpse board, and he’s a serial killer too, Kissed (1996), We So Seldom Look On Love, a tasteful necrophiliac film, actors to play the corpses, a letter story from a 13 year old girl, in love with the corpses, freaky deaky, everybody needs some body to love, the puns about necrophilia.

The Canal by Everil Worrell - Illustrated by Hugh Rankin

NIGHT GALLERY Death On A Barge

Posted by Jesse Willis