atavistic guilt – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #261 – READALONG: The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #261 – Jesse, Tamahome, Julie Davis, and Mr Jim Moon discuss The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Talked about on today’s show:
1901, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s knighthood, fairies, the Boer War, war, Sir Henry Baskerville is a Baronet, the importance of being present in the community, stone age poverty, Goodreads, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, the mysterious silhouetted man on the moor, Agatha Christie, a locked moor mystery, the English country house mystery, The Adventure Of The Devil’s Foot, whist, the Joker did it, Cornwall, Devon, Professor Moriarty, a mystery series vs. a character series, detective fiction, “he’s Mr. Spock, essentially”, Watson is a good detective, Laura Lyons, Watson’s suspicions, the Clive Merrison/Basil Rathbone version, the bumblers ruin it, the walking stick deductions, Sherlock Holmes is making jokes, the Derek Jacobi narration, “I can feel the foil”, Dr. Mortimer (mort), Barrymore (buries more bodies), Franklin the telescopist is very frank, Lafter House, Mrs. Laura Lyons is always lying, Merripit House, Professor Challenger books, The Lost World, The Poison Belt, The White Company, LibriVox, the Crusades, inventing the mystery genre, Watson’s humour, scientific pre-occupations, astronomy, entomology, phrenology, atavism, atavistic guilt, the theme of the book, the stone age people, Seldon the Notting Hill murderer, nature vs. nurture, super-awesome writing, the Gothic tropes, ancestral curses, The Rats In The Walls by H.P. Lovecraft, The Sussex Vampire, it’s a Scooby Doo plot, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, why is this the best Sherlock Holmes story?, the most adapted movie, Tom Baker’s Hound Of The Baskervilles (1982), the Hammer movie (1959), Jeremy Brett, Peter Cushing, the new Sherlock adaptation (?), the title a hound from hell, The White Wolf (aka The Wolf) by Guy de Maupassant, “he throws it over his salad”, “gently”, the Wild Hunt, Deities & Demigods, Odin or Wotan, the origins of Santa Claus, Herne the Hunter, Wayland, the yeth hounds and the wish hounds, “hell-hound chowder”, The Woodcutter by Kate Danley, La Chasse-Galerie (aka “The Bewitched Canoe” aka “The Flying Canoe”) by Honoré Beaugrand, the document, a warning story, what season is the story set?, Charles Baskerville died in the Spring, those cheap Canadian imports were ruining England, the butterfly, cyclopides, the booming of the bittern, Leslie S. Klinger, The Baker Street Irregulars, learning the Klingon, the love story, Beryl (Garcia) Stapleton, a true love, the convict, a rich text, “ah my dear, you’re so beautiful in the moorlight”, American Hustle, Julie needs the romance to be true, did Stapleton actually die?, Baskerville nearly dies, the poor curly haired spaniel!, the two moor ponies, Stapleton’s ego, the London adventure, “there’s something very tropical about her”, the red herrings, they’re all weridos on the moor, the convict’s clothing, Holmes’ remorse, phosphorous would burn the dog to death, radium condoms, radium toothpaste, the Stapleton’s school, a consumptive tutor, “The Case Of The Vatican Cameos“, the Father Brown stories, The Aluminum Crutch, The Case Of The Cardboard Box?, Bee-keeping.

Marvel Preview - THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

The Hound Of The Baskervilles - CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #253 – READALONG: The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #253 – Jesse, Seth, and John Feaster discuss The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Talked about on today’s show: H.P. Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror in Literature; the House as a character in the novel; the novel’s memorable characters; The Scarlet Letter is “a sentence, a trial unto itself”; the novel’s modern resonance; Jim Crow gingerbread; setting and character trump plot; the rambling plot imitates life; Hawthorne’s subtle use of humor; Hepzibah = Lovecraft?; the family chickens, Chanticleer is an allusion to Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale; Chanticleer dredges up John’s horrible memories of Rock-a-doodle; comparison to various Lovecraft stories; Hawthorne’s characters are concepts, but well-drawl concepts; allegory with depth à la Tolkien; atavistic guilt; hypnotism, mesmerism, and phrenology, oh my!; phenomena as fads in science fiction and popular culture; Edgar Allen Poe’s work, especially The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and Fall of the House of Usher; Arthur Conan Doyle is to spiritualism as Glenn Danzig is to Satanism; The X-Files, “I Want to Believe”; John Keats’s theory of negative capability; Mark F. Smith’s LibriVox narration; man’s identity tied to real estate; a Marxist reading of the novel; the house as metaphor for the human heart; Pennsylvania and the great American land grab; the novel’s peculiarly Puritan nature; real-life Pynchon family ancestors of author Thomas Pynchon; inspiration for the fictional house now a tourist attraction; Hawthorne’s defense of writing a romance in the novel’s preface; the novel’s horrendous screen adaptations and slightly better comic book adaptations; The Haunting of Hill House; the power of interpretive haunting; revival of the Gothic tradition e.g. in The Duchess of Duke Street; Hawthorne plays amazing tricks with point of view; “guns are America’s pit bulls”; Joe Hill’s Locke and Key.

The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The House Of The Seven Gables - Classics Illustrated

Characters in The House Of The Seven Gables

Gold Key - The Twilight Zone - Pinup #5

Word Cloud for Supernatural Horror In Literature by H.P. Lovecraft

Word Cloud for The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Phoebe and Holgrave

The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne -illustrated by Maude Cowles, 1898

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

SFFaudio Online Audio

The famous and exquisitely wrought novel, The House of the Seven Gables, in which the relentless working out of an ancestral curse is developed with astonishing power against the sinister background of a very ancient Salem house … from this setting came the immortal tale — New England’s greatest contribution to weird literature — and we can feel in an instant the authenticity of the atmosphere presented to us. Stealthy horror and disease lurk within the weather-blackened, moss-crusted, and elm-shadowed walls of the archaic dwelling so vividly displayed, and we grasp the brooding malignity of the place when we read that its builder — old Colonel Pyncheon — snatched the land with peculiar ruthlessness from its original settler, Matthew Maule, whom he condemned to the gallows as a wizard in the year of the panic. Maule died cursing old Pyncheon — “God will give him blood to drink” — and the waters of the old well on the seized land turned bitter. Maule’s carpenter son consented to build the great gabled house for his father’s triumphant enemy, but the old Colonel died strangely on the day of its dedication. Then followed generations of odd vicissitudes, with queer whispers about the dark powers of the Maules, and sometimes terrible ends befalling the Pyncheons.

-H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature

The House Of The Seven Gables

For an upcoming SFFaudio Podcast READALONG of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of The Seven Gables I point you towards this unabridged 12 hour 20 minute solo narration by Mark F. Smith:

With novels on LibriVox my preferred file type is M4B (DRM-FREE of course) because they’re natively bookmarkable – but a Zipped MP3 version, and a vanilla podcast feed are also available.

Part 1 |M4B|
Part 2 |M4B|
Part 3 |M4B|

Podcast feed:
https://librivox.org/rss/2961

The House Of The Seven Gables - an 1875 illustration of Clifford Pyncheon by John Dalziel

Posted by Jesse Willis

Protecting Project Pulp: The Rats In The Walls by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

H.P. Lovecraft’s claimed that his celebrated novelette, The Rats In The Walls, was “too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick.”

The Weird Tales editor, who accepted it, described it as the best his magazine had ever received.

Its publication inspired Robert E. Howard to write to the magazine and that letter was passed on to Lovecraft.

Kingsley Amis described The Rats In The Walls as having “a memorable nastiness.”

And Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi, described it this way: The Rats In The Walls is “a nearly flawless example of the short story in its condensation, its narrative pacing, its thunderous climax, and its mingling of horror and poignancy.”

I call it awesome. How can you not love words like “Obscure rodent manifestations” all strung together? Or this sentence:

“Sir William, standing with his searchlight in the Roman ruin, translated aloud the most shocking ritual I have ever known; and told of the diet of the antediluvian cult which the priests of Cybele found and mingled with their own.”

Protecting Project Pulp No. 47 – The Rats In The Walls
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by James Silverstein
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour 1 Minute [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Protecting Project Pulp
Podcast: June 3, 2013
Delapore, a Virginian, recounts the events which occurred after takes up residence in his ancestor’s feudal English seat. First published in Weird Tales, March 1924.

The Rats In The Walls - illustration by William F. Heitman

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #214 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft

The SFFaudio Podcast #214 – The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft; read by the fabulous Mike Bennett. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novella (3 hours 2 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Julie Hoverson, and Mr. Jim Moon.

Talked about on today’s show:
My only holy book, Deities & Demigods, Deep Ones, Dagon, serving the will of Cthulhu, “they can only be killed by violent death”, why are they evil, seafood, miscegenation, the war on alcohol, they like to drink and wear jewelry, are there Deep Ones in Guantanamo Bay?, only crackers and soup, Innsmouth, Massachusetts, Captain Obed Marsh, persuaded to breed with a deep one, immortality, 19th century, “festering quietly”, “a nice family reunion”, why is The Shadow Over Innsmouth so cherished?, Call Of Cthulhu The Dark Places Of The Earth, a Skyrim mission, Dagon and Mother Hydra, Dagon, New England Tahitians, Walter Gilman in The Dreams In The Witch House, The Thing On The Doorstep, Doctor Who’s The Sea Devil is The Shadow Over Innsmouth with less schtupping, The Silurians, can’t go wrong with a good sea monster, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Julie’s adaptation will have more sex!, Alan Moore’s Neonomicon, g-men, an Esoteric Order Of Dagon style-cult, a traumatic read, the end, the film of Dagon (set in Spain), Stuart Gordon, Castle Freak is one of the best dramatic Full Moon films, the Masters Of Horror adaptation of The Dreams In The Witch House, The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society adaptation (Dark Adventure Radio Theatre), the framing story, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, who is our protagonist confessing to?, Double Indemnity, heredity and atavism, 1920s, 1930s, Zadok Allen, Julie’s adaptation of The Rats In The Walls, The Picture In The House, female characters in Lovecraft, Cool Air, Lovecraft cares about words, House Of The Dead, the San Juan Islands, the naming of islands, Lovecraft crafts with love, August Derleth!, “the full gibbous moon”?, racism, the “Gilman Inn” is a pun, The Whisperer In Darkness, he’s there for the architecture, “reluctant fascination”, that old uncle who smells weird, The Shuttered Room by August Derleth, the worst fanfic writer ever, posthumous collaboration, Fishhead by Irvin S. Cobb, The Harbor-Master by Robert W. Chambers, an inbred wild-man, local rednecks, “a bit too close to the sea”, an economic depression, isn’t it a good deal?, arranged marriages, what’s with the Innsmouth Chamber Of Commerce?, in the Octopus’ garden, Brown Monkey, Dick Dynamo: The Fifth Dimensional Man, meta, 118 Migration, Afterlives (a Bangsian fantasy), the golden era of internet audio drama, a new idea, Hypnobobs, classics vs. moderns, old books have vocabulary, Jack London, MTV saturated audiences?, Goodreads reviews of Dracula, Fifty Shades Of Grey, atheist vicars?, the stress on the importance of reading may breed bad books, teachers pick books with big social value, Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, turning kids off literature, Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, using Robinson Crusoe as a guide to life, police procedural, obstreperous, The Murders At The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, the audiobook of The Moonstone.

Weird Tales, May 1942 (Canadian edition)

The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft WEIRD TALES - Canadian - Edmond Good

The Shadow Over Innsmouth - illustration by Hannes Bok

Deep One from Dieties & Demigods

The Shadow Over Innsmouth - illustration by Frank Utpatel

Neonomicon by Allan Moore and Jacen Burrows

The Shadow Over Innsmouth - illustration by Bernie Wrightson

The Shadow Over Innsmouth - illustration by Lee McCloud for an unfunded Stuart Gordon movie

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Ghosts by Lord Dunsany

SFFaudio Online Audio

I quite like this one. It makes a fit companion to The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Red Room by H.G. Wells.

The Ghosts begins as straightforward haunted house story, one coming out of the Gothic tradition. Our hero, a skeptic, is staying with his brother at an ancient baronial estate. There, he argues with his brother about the existence of ghosts, and what sorts of evidence for their existence would be acceptable. Then, in order to make his point, he proceeds to induce in himself a ghostly experience by means darkness, drugs, and deprivation.

Are the ghosts he sees real and if so, is his point proved?

The Ghosts by Lord Dunsany - illustrated by Sidney Sime - "Oneleigh"

The Ghosts by Lord Dunsany - illustrated by Sidney Sime - "A Herd Of Black Creatures"

The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast
Podcast: March 21, 2006
First published in 1908.

The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by William Coon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: 2006
First published in 1908.

Here’s an illustrated |PDF| made from the publication in The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories.

Posted by Jesse Willis