horror – Page 40

The SFFaudio Podcast #160 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #160 – Jesse, Tamahome, and Brian Murphy (of The Silver Key and Black Gate) talk about Red Nails by Robert E. Howard (read by Gregg Margarite for LibriVox). The audiobook runs 3 Hours 21 minutes and the discussion begins after that.

Talked about on today’s show:
Comics, the comic adaptation of Red Nails, Conan Saga, Savage Tales, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema, Storyteller, Wolverine, the REH Comics Yahoo! Group, Beyond The Black River, Tower Of The Elephant, Karl Edward Wagner, Queen Of The Black Coast, grimness, pirates, torture, lesbianism, happy endings, “so much for that decades old gang war”, it’s Red Nails is like a Tom Baker Doctor Who serial, haunted city, a feud culture, Tolkemec’s laser, “if it bleeds we can kill it”, Conan the chauvinist, Valeria kicks ass, is the story told from Valeria’s POV?, it begins like a mystery, the “dragon” is a dinosaur (sort of), Techotl, writer shorthand, Star Trek (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield), Techotl is Gollum-like, Red Nails as a gang war, why didn’t they all get rickets and starve, Howard was the original locavore, a roofed city vs. a domed city, Hatfields vs. McCoys, the black pillar of vengeance, ConanRedNails.com, HBO can do no wrong, copyright vs. trademark, Dark Horse’s Chronicles Of Conan #4, colour and colouring, Howard as a stylist, Book X of The Odyssey, The Land of the Lotus Eaters, The Dark Man: The Journal Of Robert E. Howard Studies, using digital copies to research (control-f), Aztec, Toltecs, cannibalism, Jack London, Harold Lamb, William Morris, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, sword and sorcery, horror, The Black Stone, Worms Of The Earth by Robert E. Howard, Tantor Media’s tantalizing collection Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, condemn Howard’s racism praise his writing, Orson Scott Card, Al Harron of The Blog That Time Forgot, Apparition In The Prize Ring by Robert E. Howard, Ace Jessel, Solomon Kane, what will we do after?, just an average weekend with laser beams, the gonzo ending of Red Nails, BrokenSea’s The Queen Of The Black Coast audio drama, Bill Hollweg, legal trouble, Sherlock Holmes, Disney’s John Carter vs. Dynamite Entertainment‘s Warlord Of Mars.

Red Nails - interior fold out art by Ken Kelly

Red Nails - Ending - art by Barry Windsor-Smith

Red Nails by Robert E. Howard

Red Nails illustration by Margaret Brundage from Weird Tales, July 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, July 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, August September 1936

Red Nails illustration by Harold S. De Lay from Weird Tales, October 1936

Red Nails by Robert E. Howard - illustration by George Barr

Red Nails - illustration by George Barr

George Barr ILLUSTRATION for Red Nails

Valeria by Geoffrey Isherwood (in the style of Barry Windsor Smith)

Red Nails - illustrated by Gregory Manchess

Posted by Jesse Willis

City Of Dreams: The Damned Are Playing At Godzilla Tonight on YouTube

SFFaudio News

SEEING EAR THEATRE - J. Michael Straczynski's City Of Dreams

You’ve heard rumors of the City of Dreams. It’s existence has been officially denied, although unconfirmed reports have placed it beneath the ruins of Machu Pichu in South America. Others say it’s in Arkham, Massachusetts, or hidden in a secret network of tunnels under Moscow.

But we’re here to tell you the truth. Do you want to know where the City of Dreams is?

It’s on YouTube! Yes, the wondrous Twilight Zone-esque series written by J. Michael Straczynski and produced as a part of The Seeing Ear Theatre is available on YouTube. Here’s the first episode:

Episode 1 – The Damned Are Playing At Godzilla Tonight

Part 1 of 3:

Part 2 of 3:

Part 3 of 3:

The dark, ominous tale of the bigoted owner of a small nightclub in the City of Dreams who faces a new sound, and a band that just won’t quit…on either side of the grave.

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Cast:
Steve Buscemi
Kevin Conway
Christopher Burns
Kevin Daniels
Beth Glover
J.R. Horne
Ezra Knight

[via J. Michael Straczynski’s Twitter feed]

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’ve posted about this story before. It’s worth posting about again and again. What’s new now is this reading, which is PUBLIC DOMAIN, and therefore extremely handy. Included also, for the first time, is some really stunning art!

I’ve also added a PDF, for handy printing!

What Was It? by Fitz-James O'Brien

"In Five Minutes We Had A Plaster Mold Of The Creature"

What Was It? by Fitz-James O'Brien - illustration from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1949

What Was It? by Fitz-James O'Brien - from A Stable For Nightmares, 1896

What Was It?
By Fitz-James O’Brien; Read by Peter Yearsley
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 2006
|ETEXT|
One of the earliest known examples of invisibility in fiction is What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien – He’s been called “the most important figure after Poe and before Lovecraft” and this story serves as a kind of a bridge between the supernatural and the scientific, between the likes of de Maupassant’s The Horla and Wells’ The Invisible Man.
First published in Harper’s Magazine, March 1859.

Here’s a |PDF| complied from the Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1949 publication.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Under The Knife by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

Under The Knife by H.G. Wells

Here’s an interesting story by the always pioneering H.G. Wells – it’s Horror of sorts – or as close as the master of SF can come to it – it features an out of body experience, a near death experience, and astral projection!

Under The Knife by H.G. Wells - Editorial Introduction by Hugo Gernsback

Under The Knife by H.G. Wells - Illustration from Amazing Stories

Under The Knife (aka Slip Under the Knife)
By H.G. Wells; Read by William Coon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 35 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 07, 2007
A patient, under surgery, relates his sense experiences as careens around the physical universe in a celestial journey. First published in The New Review, January 1896.

Here’s a |PDF| made from the March 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood

SFFaudio Online Audio

Set in the Canadian wilderness, The Wendigo, one of the two very highly regarded Algernon Blackwood novellas (the other being The Willows). This story is credited as being the first major fictional work to introduce the titular creature into the public consciousness.

Having heard this audiobook version I think it would make an incredibly affective audio drama. According to my researches there actually was one, recorded for CBC Radio’s 1970s radio drama series Theatre 10:30, but I’ve not been able to track down a copy.

The audiobook narrator, Amy Gramour, does a very serviceable job telling the tale – though to my ear some of her pronunciation sounds a bit off. But, that may be simply the regional accent as Gramour reports her accent as being “Mainly a South of Boston Massachusetts accent with a Northern Maine influence.”

Here’s a turly choice line, from near the end of the story:

“The legend is picturesque enough,” observed the doctor after one of the longer pauses, speaking to break it rather than because he had anything to say, “for the Wendigo is simply the Call of the Wild personified, which some natures hear to their own destruction.”

The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
An amazingly potent tale... H.P. Lovecraft

The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood - from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1944

The above illustrations come from the June 1944 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

The Wendigo
By Algernon Blackwood; Read by Amy Gramour
3 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 2 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: May 11, 2011
|ETEXT|
A hunting party, in the Canadian wilderness, separates to track moose, and one member is abducted by the Wendigo of legend. First published in the 1910 collection The Lost Valley And Other Stories.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/5449

iTunes 1-Click |SUBSCRIBE|

[Thanks also to WYSIWYG and TriciaG]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Horror At Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Horror At Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft

Here is H.P. Lovecraft’s novelette The Horror At Red Hook. The story was first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales and later in the March 1952 issue (which is where I found the terrific Jon Arfstrom at the bottom of the post).

Red Hook is a mysterious slum in New York City, full of gangs, crime, and just perhaps a terrible cult. Detective Malone had a case that had tendrils extending into Red Hook. It seems that one Robert Suydam, a corpulent and scruffy recluse, has been looking younger, more radiant and prosperous. What does that have to do with the recent spate of kidnappings?

Lovecraft described his inspiration for the story in a letter written to Clark Ashton Smith:

“The idea that black magic exists in secret today, or that hellish antique rites still exist in obscurity, is one that I have used and shall use again. When you see my new tale “The Horror at Red Hook”, you will see what use I make of the idea in connexion with the gangs of young loafers & herds of evil-looking foreigners that one sees everywhere in New York.”

First up, as recorded in three parts for Quentin Lewis’ When Elvis Died podcast back in 2010.

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://www.quentinlewis.com/podcast/rss.xml

Next, a two part recording, for the Cthulhu Podcast, read by FNH. The first part begins at 14 minutes in and the second part begins at 34 minutes in.