I hadn’t heard of Dream-Lands, by Edgar Allan Poe, until I spotted mention of it in some obscure tome. It sounded cool. So I found the original publication in Graham’s Magazine, June 1844, read it, and then and sent it to my friend, Wayne June. Wayne hadn’t heard of it before, but he loved it, calling it “appropriately dismal.” The best part, he has recorded it for our listening pleasure.
Just in, this very interesting anthology, edited by Stefan Rudnicki! I couldn’t find a Table of Contents on this package or on the Audible site, so I included it below. Why don’t audio publishers find the Table of Contents important when it comes to anthologies and collections? Because… THEY ARE.
After seeing the contents, I’m eager to dive into this. Oliver Onions, Guy de Maupassant, Harlan Ellison, John Crowley… Harlan Ellison reading John Crowley… this is terrific!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Lofty Ambitions by Harlan Ellison, read by Harlan Ellison
PART 1: THE MYTHS WE LIVE BY A Youth In Apparel That Glittered by Stephen Crane, read by Stefan Rudnicki (poem) After the Myths Went Home by Robert Silverberg, read by Stefan Rudnicki Novelty by John Crowley, read by Harlan Ellison Pan And The Firebird by Sam M. Steward, read by Stefan Rudnicki Murderer, The Hope Of All Women by Oskar Kokoschka, performed by cast The Touch Of Pan by Algernon Blackwood, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Lost Thyrsis by Oliver Onions, read by Roz Landor The Bacchae (excerpt) by Eurpides, performed by cast
PART 2: MYTHS THAT BITE A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman, read by Stefan Rudnicki Mystery Train by Lewis Shiner, read by John Rubenstein Continued On The Next Rock by R.A. Lafferty, read by Stefan Rudnicki Diary Of A God by Barry Pain, read by Enn Reitel The Repairer of Reputations (excerpt) by Robert W. Chambers, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers, read by Stefan Rudnicki An Inhabitant Of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce, read by Danny Campbell The Horla by Guy de Maupassant, read by Arte Johnson
PART 3: SHOCKING FUTURES Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by Stefan Rudnicki (poem) City Come A’Walkin (excerpt) by John Shirley, read by Don Leslie A Pail Of Air by Fritz Leiber, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Machine Stops (excerpt) by E.M. Forster, read by Roz Landor Looking Backward and Equality (excerpts) by Edward Bellamy, read by David Birney Gulliver’s Travels (excerpt) by Jonathan Swift read by Scott Brick Utopia (excerpt) by Sir Thomas More, read byChristopher Cazanove Monument To Amun by Queen Hatshepsut, read by Judy Young
PART 4: TRAVELING FOOLS La Bateau Ivre by Arthur Rimbaud, read by Stefan Rudnicki Inspiration by Ben Bova, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Bones Do Lie by Anne McCaffrey, read by Stefan Rudnicki A Princess Of Mars (excerpt) by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by John Rubinstein The Great Stone Of Sardis (excerpt) by Frank R. Stockton, read by David Birney Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland (excerpt) by Lewis Carroll, read by Michael York Diary Of A Madman (excerpt) by Nicolai Gogol, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Inferno (excerpt) by Dante, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Odyssey of Homer (excerpt), read by David Birney
PART 5: TRANSFORMERS The Stolen Child by William B. Yeats, read by Stefan Rudnicki The Porcelain Salamander by Orson Scott Card, read by Gabrielle de Cuir Let’s Get Together by Isaac Asimov, read by Arte Johnson Dracula (excerpt) by Bram Stoker, read by Simon Vance Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (excerpt) by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by John Lee Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, read by Gabrielle de Cuir Frankenstein (excerpt) by Mary Shelley, read by Stefan Rudnicki0\ * The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh (Traditional English Fairy Tale), read by Judy Young A Midsummer Night’s Dream (excerpt) by William Shakespeare, performed by cast The Ballad of Tam Lin (Celtic ballad), read by Stefan Rudnicki Metamorphosis (excerpt) by Ovid, read by Cassandra Campbell
PART 6: REST IN PIECES
Hearse Song The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Stefan Rudnicki The New Testament: Revelations (excerpt), read by Stefan Rudnicki The Colloquy of Monos & Una by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir From the Crypts of Memory by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Danny Campbell The Comet by W.E.B. DuBois, read by Mirron Willis Sand (excerpt) by Stefan Rudnicki, performed by cast Transience by Arthur C. Clarke, read by Bahni Turpin The Illusionist by Gareth Owen, read by Stefan Rudnicki Unchosen Love by Ursula K. LeGuin, read by Stefan Rudnicki In Lonely Lands by Harlan Ellison, read by Harlan Ellison News from Nowhere (excerpt) by William Morris, read by Stefan Rudnicki
PART 7: COMMENTARIES The Special And General Joys of Science Fiction by Ben Bova, read by Stefan Rudnicki Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 by Elliott Engel, read by Gabrielle de Cuir Adolescence And Adulthood In Science Fiction by Orson Scott Card, read by Stefan Rudnicki
Talked about on today’s show:
the classic Tarzan yodel, the dum-dum service, Tarzana, California, those beautiful Burroughsian run-on sentences:
“From this primitive function has arisen, unquestionably, all the forms and ceremonials of modern church and state, for through all the countless ages, back beyond the last uttermost ramparts of a dawning humanity our fierce, hairy forebears danced out the rites of the Dum-Dum to the sound of their earthen drums, beneath the bright light of a tropical moon in the depth of a mighty jungle which stands unchanged today as it stood on that long forgotten night in the dim, unthinkable vistas of the long dead past when our first shaggy ancestor swung from a swaying bough and dropped lightly upon the soft turf of the first meeting place.”
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (and SFBRP #151), Edgar Allan Poe should be read aloud, The Return Of Tarzan, racism, Esmeralda, Gone With The Wind, minstrel shows, Chicago, Arizona, the mammy archetype, radio drama racism, Jar Jar Binks, Star Wars: Episode III, October 1912, historical dialect, Jane (the white lady), “you just shot a woman in the head”, cannibalism, Conan Tarzan lynches his mother’s killer, rope tricks, out of context vs. in context, Tarzan as a god, Ballantine Books, the dum-dum scholars, Project Gutenberg edition, ERB Incorporated, Tarzan The Censored by Jerry L. Schneider, Tarzan Of The Apes censorship and “improvements” since the original publication, “an English grammar Nazi”, The Heathen by Jack London, taking out or changing a few words can hurt the story, Earnest Hemingway and William Shakespeare are “too wordy”, Tab Cola, Tarzan’s relationship with the cannibal villagers, “mankind and civilization aren’t”, colonialism, the Belgian Congo, King Leopold II, contemplating cannibalism, “the white god of the woods”, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), Wisconsin, Tarzan’s ape father is driven away by Kerchak (and turned into a museum exhibit), “the Evil village of Scotland”, the sadness that comes with the deaths is powerful, Paul D’Arno, Obi Wan Kenobi, “Tarzan was the blockbuster hit of the twentieth century”, A Princess Of Mars, Ruritania, The Mad King, “complete in one issue”, All-Story, the scanty Science Fiction elements, feral children, Romulus and Remus, Mowgli, Tarzan is a wild child, “this line from a book”, all of Burroughs characters are excellent language learners, when Tarzan writes a note, Lord Of The Jungle (Dynamite Entertainment), the mistaken dual identity, “Jane has massive bosoms”, Green Mansions (starring Rima, The Jungle Girl), Johnny Weissmuller, “the Sheena of South America”, Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins, Psycho, significantly more significant, the primary driver of fiction of this period is character, Nancy Drew, book serials, Rudyard Kipling dissed Burroughs’ writing and grammar, White Fang is kind of like Tarzan Of The Apes, first person vs. third person, you can’t admire the character from afar if the story is told first person, Sherlock Holmes, “that turn towards character is a turn towards the third person omniscient POV”, “that heroic distance” (1910-1950), Raymond Chandler, “I read Chandler”, Tarzan is the only Burroughs series that doesn’t turn to first person narration, John Carter’s character, why is Tarzan such a big character, Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography Of Lord Greystoke by Philip José Farmer, Tarzan as a quiet sophisticate, Doc Savage, The Green Odyssey by Philip José Farmer, Farmer is a fan of character, a stranger in a strange land, what ruined Julie for religion, The Mastermind Of Mars (is PUBLIC DOMAIN), “Tur is Tur.”, copyright, copyfight, jungle Tarzan vs. cafe absinthe drinking Tarzan, “the machine”, the Weissmuller Tarzan, where does he get his razor?, “that knife was his father”, “next book please”, Tarzan And His Mate , “lots of wet people”, “skin friendly”, melon-farmer vs. motherfucker, Boy and Cheeta are Hollywood, Scrappy-do, what did Tantor have to say?, Sabor the lioness, “there are no tigers in Africa, Ed”, Crocodile Dundee, Beyond Thirty, The Mucker, yellow peril looking dudes, The Girl From Hollywood, The Man Eater, early road trips, The Land That Time Forgot, The Lost World, the Caspak series, WWI, “sheer headlong adventure”, The Asylum, closing words, “it’s not what you think”, “really really good fun”, baby ape skeleton in the cradle, a classic of writing, a touching story, “and vengeance is his”, serialization in newspapers, cliffhangers, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins,
Nobody does Edgar Allan Poe better than Wayne June.
The Conqueror Worm
by Edgar Allan Poe
Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
I made this desktop wallpaper for my new computer’s desktop – that’s what I did yesterday instead of actually unpacking and setting up the computer itself. Click through to get the full size version. The images were drawn by Neil Austin for issues of Famous Fantastic Mysteries from 1947 to 1950.
Pictured are H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Robert W. Chambers, Sydney Fowler Wright, Algernon Blackwood, H.G. Wells, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Machen, M.P. Shiel, John Taine, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Olaf Stapledon, and M.R. James.
Xe Sands recorded this classic horror story as a Halloween treat – and we certainly appreciate it, but I couldn’t help but laugh the maniacal laughter of a monomaniac when I learned that although the story was indeed originally published in October, 170 years ago, it was actually published as a Christmas story!
The Pit And The Pendulum was first published in The Gift, a Christmas And New Year’s Present for 1843.
And here’s Byam Shaw’s chilling illustration, again not particularly Christmasy, from Selected Tales Of Mystery:
