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Episode 510 - The Aquarium (Patreon)

Published:
2020-08-09 15:39:58
Imported:
2021-07
⚑ Flagged

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In honor of the new HBO show, we're plunging back into Lovecraft country with the mythos story The Aquarium by Carl Jacobi.

We read this story in Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos.

Special thanks to our reader Heather Klinke!

Next Up: O, Christmas Tree by W.H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Comments

Anonymous

Anyone else getting Scientology vibes from the concept of thinking mollusks? Maybe Chad just confused me with all the Hollywood super-aquarium talk.

Anonymous

I’ve always been fond of this tale. Glad you covered it.

Anonymous

If you can't get hold of TALES OF THE LOVECRAFT MYTHOS, I found a version of "The Aquarium" online at http://indbooks.in/mirror1/?p=352733 Glad to hear Heather reading again! I think this is at least the third story the podcast has covered which involved metempsychosis, including Poe's "Metzengerstein" and Abraham Merritt's "The Drone." It's funny to imagine the Elder Gods reduced to conchs. That'd be one piquant plate of fritters!

Anonymous

Great show & now going to look into more Jacobi cheers

Richard Horsman

Great ep! But looking at the show notes I'm reminded how sad it is that Pugmire now fits the "must be dead" qualification. Death is a tyrant.

Jason Thompson

Nothing at all definitive but re: the potential gayness, Carl Jacobi’s Wiki says “he was a lifelong bachelor”

Anonymous

Does anyone know where one could find that vampire tale "Revelations in Black". Amazon only seems to have a first run edition for $900. Incidentally "kuching" is the Malay word for cat.

Anonymous

Well this brought a lot back. Quite a few years back now, I was helping actors prepare auditions for a big ol' Hollywood film. It was a real opportunity for actresses to make a name for themselves - and for agencies to pull in some cash and raise their profile. So I spent six weeks or so going to agencies and apartments and all. Most of the agencies in Japan are very, very mobbed up. I'd had good experiences with the yakuza when I lived outside Hiroshima (they were instrumental in the events that led to my marriage, but that's another story) so I felt fine about working with them despite the general air of menace. I was fine with it all until I visited the sketchiest place I've ever walked into and out of. The staff was downright hostile. The actress I worked with was somewhere on the fear spectrum. And one wall was taken up with the biggest, most filthy aquarium I have ever seen. And that aquarium, more than anything, scared me. I couldn't for the life of me work out why anyone would leave it like that. Wouldn't *someone* clean it? Order it to be cleaned? Have the whole thing chucked out? Apparently not. It was cloudy. Murky. And bubbling with what must have been the aerator. Mustn't it have been? She did not get the part. I never saw any of those agency folks again. And I am still slightly nervous whenever I use the nearest train station.

Anonymous

Speaking of Pitch Black Manor, assuming Necronomicon 2021 happens - will there be a live performance?

Anonymous
>>41919392

Here you go Sanjay, courtesy of Luminist.org’s Weird Tales archive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13p78_yKp0g9GYK-HfwKKCUW053ts8R8w/view?usp=drive_open

Anonymous

I love stories like this, tight. The women (to me) are written to be old fashion-type spinsters with a dash of unattractive, witch-like physicality. I wonder if the two women are also supposed to be sensitive, instinctual witches (with a cat yet!)? The weaker and less rational of the two falling under the influence of the thing in the aquarium. First read through I thought she called the creature up and it ate her; I thought she'd done something badly, but again on second reading, she could have been lured into doing something bad for her health. It's pretty obvious, what happened to the brother of the conchologist. I suppose that the the destruction of the shells was due to what had happened, tho the timeline isn't clear. The end puts a brilliant seal on the story. Mrs Rhodes' behavior is so realistic. From the moment she prepares to enter the room, the narrative focuses tightly on her physical behavior. Her looking, rather than her seeing. She just shut down. Walking while the information was attempting to process, street name by street name. Her reserved behavior beforehand makes the scream a lot more primal. The story got me thinking about what I'd do in a world where there was magic, but only this kind of warped, hostile, mathematical magic. Maybe I'd use it because it was the only game in town.

Anonymous

I wonder if the startling depths that Horatio dove were a reference to the Cayman Trench?

Anonymous

While I generally enjoyed this story, it didn't feel terribly Lovecraftian. I think if you took out the litany of scary books and the reference to Cthulhu, it'd just be a story about a house with a creepy old aquarium with something sinister inside, and honestly I think it'd be stronger for it, since I went into this expecting something more horrific and cosmic and found myself rather disappointed that it was only a murder mollusk. A good weird tale, but not a particularly Lovecraftian one.

Anonymous

Lovecraft Country looks like any other piece of crap HBO does,2nd episode jumps the shark and it becomes a ClownWorld show.””Whitey’s on the Moon” ,lol totally racist trope.

Anonymous
>>42751938

Unlike all those Strange Fiction stories, which definitely don't jump any sharks or make uneasy statements about social relations