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Episode 547 - The Sunken Land (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-14 22:52:34
Edited:
2021-05-15 15:24:22
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

A-MAY-ZING FANTASY MONTH continues with The Sunken Land by Fritz Leiber!

Special thanks to reader Sean Burnham! Check out his YouTube page where he analyzes English folk songs, or his BandCamp page where he performs as John Dingo!

Next up: Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore featuring Jirel of Joiry!

Comments

Mikey B

Thanks for putting these shows out, my partner and I have started reading fridays fantasy story and listening to the podcast together. Cheap date! Take care yous xo

Ben Gilbert

I thought Yoh-Vombis also when reading this story. On a side note the Simurgh is a giant bird-like creature of Persian myth.

Anonymous

You guys are slipping on the research. You mentioned before (during "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes," I believe) how Leiber licensed Newhon as an AD&D 2E campaign setting. Well, aside from having AD&D stats for Lovecraft's Night-Gaunts, it offers stats for both Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser—hell, it offers three sets of stats for each based on whether it's early in their careers, they're at their peak, or they're getting old! Chris, you had no need to conjecture. The Grey Mouser *is* multi-classed. That bad mofo is a warrior/thief/mage! (Also you can't peruse all the Lankmar AD&D material online, don't even *bother* checking thetrove.is for it.) Also, Newhon is in a Multiverse and there's space ships? That's AD&D as all hell. Well, wait. Are they spaceships or space...*ships?* Because in AD&D you have straight up pirate ships sailing through the vacuum of space. ...*Gods* I love Spelljammer.

Anonymous
>>59855399

Actually, Chris, as one of the few other people I know that have played AD&D 2E, I must ask: have you played Planescape: Torment?

Anonymous

To follow up on Shoggoth Lord's question, I replayed Torment just a couple of years ago and, old as it is, it was still fun. If you haven't tried it Chris, really recommend it, especially now that Beamdog has "refurbished" it

Anonymous
>>59863872

I'm still salty the Bleakers aren't a joinable Faction. Still, from what I've played, it's an amazing representation of the setting. I just wish my executive dysfunction would cooperate and let me marathon the thing.

Anonymous

I really like that we have established a shared frame of reference for this show. No need to stick with “indescribable” when you can just say ”it's like a cross between Cthulhus and those scary fur sheets from Yoh-vombis”. Oh, ok, got it.

Anonymous

Apologies for saying "F-AE-fhrd" instead of "F-AH-fhrd." I knew I was gonna get that wrong whichever way I tried, and apparently my meager research was inaccurate. Whoops! 😅

Anonymous

My parents had copies of the various "Swords against [stuff]" collections when I was growing up. I blame them for my questionable taste in literature now.

Anonymous

Mayzes and Monsters.

Anonymous
>>59890384

I have only Terry Pratchett to blame. I read that he drew partially on Lankhmar for his initial Discworld books and went and got the Fantasy Masterworks collections of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. They're good collections but you can really see Leiber's perfomance drop off towards the later instalments (The Frost Monstreme et al).

Anonymous

I don’t know if you’ve ever covered this, and I know it’s a literary podcast, but I’d love to hear your opinions on The Lighthouse (2019). It’s my favorite movie and I think it has many weird/lovecraftian themes.

Anonymous

“It’s about friendship this month”? We tune in every month to hear tales of the friendship of Chad Fafhrd and the Gray Mackey. It’s always A-MAY-ZING!

Anonymous

Thanks for finally getting to Mouser and Fafhrd. That brings back memories when I was inhaling these books around the age of 12 or 13, along with Conan, all with those Frank Frazetta covers. You pretty much nailed it Chad as far as friendship being a key element of these stories. This differentiates them so much from Conan and all the pale copies of the Cimmerian in which REH and others wanted their dour heroes to basically sweat their Byronic loneliness or have anyone male/female platonic/romantic partner who got close to THE HERO to be pushing up daisies by tale's end. But Mouser and Fafhrd are buddies whose personalities complement one another. It’s funny how I just never got into D&D, but I love visiting Leibers Nehwon. Might be time for a return. BTW. Has everybody seen season 2 of Love Death + Robots? It’s got what I suppose is an HPL origin story. Season 1 was better, but there are some good eps.

Anonymous
>>59936055

Oh! And a Happy Birthday to the Pride of Missouri, @klinkebeans.

Steve

Not devilry, deviltry! I read my first F&GM story, the Unholy Grail, in the kick-ass collection, Warlocks and Warriors. It's amazing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlocks_and_Warriors_(Mayflower)

Anonymous

I was so inspired by the island rising trope that I decided to do my next remote Dungeons and Dragons encounter as an island that rises from the sea. Peril awaits my poor players.

Anonymous
>>59939765

Just finished the new Love Death + Robots. Enjoyed many of them and know just which episode you're thinking of. Perhaps. Perhaps, indeed.

Anonymous
>>59928389

I agree I think it'd make a great bonus episode wink wink

Anonymous

Mother, may I murder in the stabby month of May? Mayhap my mate'll maul with me in the mayhemical month of May. Melancholy meets its match when we with friendship marine menaces dispatch, My friend was nearly quite a catch in the magical month of May.

Anonymous

Bro-MAY-ance perhaps?

Ben Gilbert

Michael Swanwick wrote in the Intro to "The Post-Utopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus", "I once asked Fritz Leiber if it was not possible that Newhon, the world inhabited by his adventurers, was actually a horror venue, disguised by the fact that Fafhrd and Mouser, those most urbane of swordsmen, always escaped the consequences of their actions at the end of each story. To this he responded, “Everything I have ever written is horror.”

Anonymous

I loved the F&amp;GM stories when I was a wee nerd, but I have been loath to return to them for fear of discovering something vile. I mean, I suspect Leiber used "to rape the unknown" in the sense of "to seize and carry off" as opposed to "sexually violate," but, geeze, navigating vocabulary landmines is not my idea of a fun read. Have you considered devoting a couple of episodes to the short novel <em>Our Lady of Darkness</em>? It really evokes the flavor of it's time and place, has some sharply drawn characters, legitimate scares, and that same sort of meta-reflection you get in "To Arkham and the Stars." One of my fonder memories was when a good friend moved out to the Bay Area for a guy, who seemed OK biut I really didn't know, and when I went to visit, he said "let's you and I drive up to the city and look at all the extant sites from Our Lady of Darkness!" It was a great bonding moment and the start of a long friendship.

Anonymous

Late to the comments again. I wanted to recommend a couple of things, one is a dark horse comics book of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser published in 2006. It was pencilled by Mike Mignola. It's a reprint of a Marvel Epic miniseries from the early 90s so right before he was about start into Hellboy.

Anonymous

My other one is Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. It's a riff on Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. It's a really quick fun read.

Anonymous

You guys should really think about reading the first collection (Swords Against Deviltry) — with the origin stories for each of them followed by the origin story for the dynamic duo. In other words how they became friends. It’s an amazing arc in three stories. Plus lots of hijinks. I guarantee you would enjoy reading it but also discussing it. The third story has one of my favorite titles of all time: Ill Met in Lankhmar. Warning: these stories contain things you aren’t used to like boozing and sex. I mean, not used to talking about in the podcast. It wasn’t meant to be personal.

Anonymous

I need to revisit Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser--I read the stories in Swords and Deviltry as part of my general "track down source material in the (later forbidden) first edition of Deities and Demigods for AD&amp;D" project that led me to Leiber, Moorcock, and, of course, HPL back when I was probably too young for most of it. HPL is the only one that I've stayed with, though; I don't think I've looked in on Fafhrd or Elric since the 80s--but not as a conscious decision, as these stories are great.

Anonymous

S.T. Joshi includes "The Sunken Land" in his The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos as one of Leiber's Mythos influenced tales pointing out the similarities between ring Fafhrd finds and the jewelry made in Innsmouth as well as between Simorgya and R'lyeh. I'm surprised Chris and Chad didn't mention these parallels especially with the "octopus shape slouched" in "a great stone chair" which would seem to denote nothing but Cthulhu himself.