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Episode 496 - The Terror from the Depths - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2020-04-16 18:17:47
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

We conclude our coverage of Fritz Leiber's Lovecraft pastiche, The Terror from the Depths!

Special thanks to our reader - Andrew Leman of Voluminous!

Support our sponsor: The Thornclaw Manor Illustrated Poker Deck and Art Book!

Next up: To Arkham and the Stars

Comments

Anonymous

On Lovecraft-is-real Mythos-esque fiction, I read a passage from a Charles Stross tale--one of the Laundry Files ones--that handled it in a way I did rather like. The way Stross handled it was by deciding that Lovecraft's fiction is one of the *worst* ways to learn about the eldritch reality around you, or to try figuring out magic. He encountered scraps of arcane lore and Yog-Sothothery in his grandpa's library as a boy, mingled with more urbane myths, and threw it into his fiction haphazardly, adding bits, subtracting bits, fusing disparate ideas to make something more evocative, and mixing it with wholly fictional bunk, and generally treating the True Knowledge of the cosmos as if he thought it was just some made up superstitions to use as inspiration--all of which leads to the lore in Lovecraft's fiction being an extremely unstable, unreliable mess of lore that's already dangerous when it's *accurate.* Lovecraft's fiction is, as Stross put it, the occult equivalent of the Anarchist's Cookbook.

Anonymous
>>35347471

Oh, Chad, when you blame your incompetence at a game on the interface--your controller, the TV, the arcade cabinet, the game's software, etc.--that's called "johns." That parlance caught on because way back, a professional fighting game tournament player whose first name is John just would *not* stop blaming his defeats on the gear. The term stuck to this day.

Anonymous

You say Wilmarth pulled a Wilmarth, but maybe he pulled a Défago -- the way his footsteps got farther apart reminds me of Blackwood's "The Wendigo." If I recall, like Wilmarth in this story, Défago wakes up, bolts, leaves footprints that get farther apart, and yells weird stuff. I'm wondering if this story has references beyond Lovecraft. If it references Blackwood, it could allude to a dozen or more Weird writers. Maybe, like T. E. D. Klein in "The Events at Poroth Farm" (still one of my favorite stories), this story is an encyclopedia of references.

Anonymous

Hey guys this is totally irrelevant to this week's show but I throw myself on the mercy of the Boon Companions. I'm conducting home based learning classes for my A-level (basically high school) Literature students. Just for fun I thought that every weekend I'd post a link to a short weird fiction piece to expand their minds. However, it's hard to choose from the many good stories the guys have covered. Maybe y'all could recommend some. I'm a James fan myself but he may not be that accessible to these durn kids. Same issue with HPL himself. Kind of leaning toward starting off pantherishly with some Howard. I need four stories which (1) Shouldn't be too long (2) Should be freely readable online (3) Should be accessible to 18 year olds who have little or no prior experience with the Weird. Just to give you a benchmark for their reading ability they're currently studying The Great Gatsby (they also do Renaissance Lit but with a lot of teacher developed assistance materials). The Cats of Ulthar was suggested to me, which is lovely, so I'll probably start with that.

Anonymous
>>35369779

If you're tackling any Bob Howard, have you considered "The Tower of the Elephant?" A delightful, pulpy action story that slips a sudden empathy-laden emotional gut punch in at the third act may do teenagers some good. I speak as a former teenager.

Anonymous

No references to The Festival? Isn't this just the logical conclusion of that story where people turn into the worms that feed on them when they die?

Anonymous

Thanks for digging this story up. I don't always read the story before you cover them (or, indeed at all) but hearing Fifer going nuts about this story I actually paused and dug it up on Kindle first. Good one! Anyway (1) those “winged worms” - what does that look like? I kept thinking worms don't grow wings, caterpillars do, but... butterflies aren't scary at all. There's a lot of things that sounds scarier to me than winged worms. (2) I kept waiting for the name Fischer to pay off – sounds like a good 'ole Innsmouth family to me – but no. But it must be intentional, right?

Anonymous

Iä! Iä! Le-mahn fhtagn! The stars are right, our bearded Lord Andr’u Le-mahn rises! Andrew Leman now has more episode tags than HP Lovecraft; therefore, the podcast must now be renamed to The Andrew Leman Literary Podcast.

Anonymous

I interpreted the ending of the story quite differently. I assumed that the father was sending an astral projection underground, and that Georg's dreams were the same thing, albeit involuntary, and that the worms were attracted to but unable to interact with his astral self. The father assumed that by 25, his son would be able to control his abilities, and by "burst the gate of dreams," he meant that it was time to go exploring astrally. By literally breaking the stone floor, he released the worms, who then proceeded to eat his face. Whoops!

Anonymous
>>35480613

Also, if you're ever at a loss for stories for the show, might I suggest either "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and/or "Day of the Triffids"? Good pulpy stories about sentient plants coming to take over the Earth-- what's not to like?

Anonymous

I had taken the idea of winged worms not to be literal, but figurative. That these burrowing creatures moved as freely through the ground as birds to through the air. Not sure why I took it that way, but I was actually surprised to find my boon companions had gone the other way.

Anonymous

I think you said this story was hard to come by, but it was reprinted in Ross Lockhart’s Book of Cthulhu 2 back in 2007 or so....

Anonymous

In terms of Lovecraft cameos, I think Victor LaValle had a good one at the end of Ballad of Black Tom, where the brief Lovecraft cameo is unnamed, but clearly HPL. As Lovecraft pastiches go I vary on this one. On the one hand, it was crammed full of Lovecraft references, but subverted the depths as being the depths of the Earth rather than the depths of the ocean. On the other hand, I didn't think it added all that much to the Lovecraftian mythos, aside from a few oblique references to sinister tunneling worms, and it lacked the batshit parody feeling that Strange Eons (intentionally or not) had.

Anonymous

Following your coverage of F. Leiber, I chased down an old copy of "Night's Black Agents" and was not disappointed! So far, I liked "The Dreams of Albert Moreland" best, which really has a cosmic horror vibe to it, though the end falls a bit flat. "An Inheritance" is also pretty solid as a supernatural suspense story. I would love to hear your take on either some time!

Anonymous

You should spend a month on *Our Lady of Darkness.* A slim novel, but so rich!

Anonymous
>>35740164

Yes! It's a very interesting intersection of Jamesian horror with the Weird.

Anonymous

Was anyone else picturing Leiber standing in front of a Wall of Crazy, with road maps and pages from stories by everyone in the Kalem Club pinned up and connected with variously colored strands of yarn, as he figured out a route for Wilmarth that would enable the maximum possible number of Mythos allusions?