Lord Dunsany – Page 12

The SFFaudio Podcast #195 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Polaris by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #195 – Polaris by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (11 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it by Jesse, Tamahome, Jim Moon.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Philosopher (an amateur magazine), is this a Christmas story?, The Festival, Lord Dunsany, The Necronomicon, Lovecraft’s Christianity, religion vs. Tradition, Lovecraft’s relationship to his characters, WWI, eldritch gibbering, fainting fits, Lovecraft loved his snoozing, reincarnation vs. mind transfer, time travel, alternate realities?, neanderthal in North America?, what is the setting?, The Horror Of The Museum, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, swamps vs. bogs vs. fens, “Eskimos” vs. “Inutos”, dishonorable dirty fighting, The Shadow Out Of Time, Dagon, The Call of Cthulhu, The Tomb, it’s The Outsider in reverse, Atlantis, Athens, Lemuria, the Land of Lomar, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Hyperborea, King Kull, Mu, the Dream Lands, atavism, The Rats In The Walls, “a penchant for strange foods”, Jack London, Carl Jung, race memory, the evolutionary path, dishonorable yellow hordes, the yellow peril, “line up and die”, startings and endings, repeated phraseology, a dunsany-esque story, the Dunsany mode, Edgar Allan Poe, its like an extended prose poem, Silence: A Fable, Shadow: A Parable, Ligea is labyrinthine, “battered by adjectives”, The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany, poetic stories, accessible Dunsany stories, In The Fields We Live, “sinister, whimsical, and beautifully odd”, Victorian magazines, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, world-building, a consistency of reality, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, lost epochs, “the wisdom of the Zobnarrian Fathers”, “bubble and blaspheme”, the alien outer gods, Lovecraft’s interest in astronomy, Charles Wain (aka the plow, aka the big dipper), mapping the skies, messages and impressions, Arcturus, Cassiopeia, Aldebaran, Philip K. Dick, “the world is alive”, a leering star, astrological time, if the seeing is good…, Lovecraft’s desire to be an astronomer, Lovecraft’s formal education.

Polaris by H.P. Lovecraft

Posted by Jesse Willis

Neil Austin’s Masters Of Fantasy (from Famous Fantastic Mysteries 1947 – 1950) DESKTOP WALLPAPER

SFFaudio News

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.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany (aka The Highwaymen)

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Highwayman by Lord Dunsany

Sometimes titled The Highwayman, sometimes The Highwaymen, Lord Dunsany’s elegant prose poem is an 1,800 word tale about a scabrous gang of bastard highwaymen. And it has something for almost everyone.

I think, despite the sacrilege and desecration in the story, that my Christian friends will like it – it’s got a lot of that redemption stuff they are big on.

I’m confident that fans of capital punishment will like it – because it certainly doesn’t repudiate legalized killing.

And my friend, Gregg Margarite, who didn’t believe in any of the underlying mythology, liked it enough to read it for LibriVox.

And me?

Yep, I like The Highwayman too.

I like the overarching premise, about friendship, I think it’s heartwarming.

Plus it’s got lot of ghoulish shit in it, and I like that stuff too.

Ronald Clyne illustration of The Highwayman (from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1944)

The Highwayman
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 13, 2010
First published in 1908.

Here’s a |PDF| made from the publication in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December, 1944.

And here’s the Sidney H. Sime illustration from the original 1908 publication in The Sword Of Welleran and Other Stories:
The Highwayman - illustration by Sidney H. Sime (1908)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft (illustration by Jack Binder from Weird Tales, November 1938)

H.P. Lovecraft’s 5,000 word short story, The Nameless City, was based one of his dreams. That dream, in turn, was inspired by the last line of Lord Dunsany’s story The Probable Adventure Of The Three Literary Men, a story from 1911 (itself available as an |MP3| from LibriVox). Indeed, the line is even quoted within the tale:

“the unreverberate blackness of the abyss”

The eponymous, anonymous, city itself seems to have been inspired by “Iram, the City of Pillars” which was a mysterious lost city – a kind of “Atlantis of the Sands” – that is mentioned in the Quran.

And one critic, according to the detailed Wikipedia entry for the story, has it that Lovecraft was inspired by At the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

And for all those reasons The Nameless City is certainly worth looking at, if you can find it.

To help I’ve assembled a |PDF| made from a scan of the story, as published in the November 1938 issue of Weird Tales.

And here are several freely available narrations:

The Nameless City
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Mark Nelson
1 |MP3| – Approx. [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: January 23, 2008
It lay silent and dead under the old cold desert moonlight, but what strange race inhabited the abyss beneath those cyclopean ruins?
First published in The Wolverine, No. 11, November 1921.

The Nameless City
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Scott Carpenter
1 |MP3| – Approx. 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 19, 2008
It lay silent and dead under the old cold desert moonlight, but what strange race inhabited the abyss beneath those cyclopean ruins?
First published in The Wolverine, No. 11, November 1921.

The Nameless City
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Rebecca M.L.
1 |MP3| – Approx. 31 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: April 14, 2011
It lay silent and dead under the old cold desert moonlight, but what strange race inhabited the abyss beneath those cyclopean ruins?
First published in The Wolverine, No. 11, November 1921.

The Nameless City
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Michael Scott
1 |MP3| – 28 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Yog Radio
Podcast: May 7, 2006
It lay silent and dead under the old cold desert moonlight, but what strange race inhabited the abyss beneath those cyclopean ruins?
First published in The Wolverine, No. 11, November 1921.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #173 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Thousand Deaths by Jack London

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #173 – A Thousand Deaths by Jack London, read by Julie Hoverson (of 19 Nocturne Boulevard). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (29 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, Julie Hoverson, and Matthew Sanborn Smith

Talked about on today’s show:
Jack London’s first professional sale, “the hirsute fruit”, the LibriVox version, is the protagonist supposed to be female?, “I don’t know what’s real”, a disintegrated Saint Bernard, a Freudian story, The Island Of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, vivisection on a South Pacific Island, a mad scientist, oedipal literature, London’s own life, H.P. Lovecraft, re-animation, archaic language, Frankenstein, a well educated sailor with an interest in science, obliquely obtuse, The Call Of The Wild, peregrinating, “overly smarty-pantsy”, is it all a dream?, a conscious death, horror, drowned sailors owe their revivers, Poultrygeist, the catalyst event, “an amoral scumbag”, Phineas Gage, blowing smoke up the near drowned, the disintegration door, Doctor Manhattan, Fallout: New Vegas, the disintegration ray, dis-integrate, anti-gravity, electrolysis, synthetic clothing, “animal charcoal”, The Shadow And The Flash is Jack London’s take on The Invisible Man, not just dogs and boats, London’s Polynesian stories, sink the Farallones, San Francisco, suspended animation, chest tampering, death vs. approaching death, drowning vs. poisoning, exploring the boundaries of death, Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe, zombies, coffin bells, meteor insurance, “I brought you in [to this world] and I can take you back out”, Bill Cosby, Jack London’s writing voice, action³, verb heavy vibrancy, a raging socialist, is it interesting or is it good?, lockjaw, psychological damage, the ending is ambiguous, a dilettante and a wastrel, do deaths mature you?, an inversion of the prodigal son, what would Eric S. Rabkin say about this story?, time travel, early Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe -> Fitz-James O’Brien -> Lord Dunsany -> William Hope Hodgson -> Ambrose Bierce, “gonzo”, “where do your ideas come from?”, There’s a Crapp For That, picturemypoo.com, eww, Flatliners, spiritualism vs. materialism, ghosts, patents, olympics, Julie Hoverson’s copyright, patent and trademarks podcast?, shotgun shelled powered battering ram, Julie Hoverson is incredibly busy, thanks Julie!, Jonathan Davis, “don’t surprise the actors”,

Posted by Jesse Willis

BBCR4 + RA.cc: H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mike Walker’s H.P. Lovecraft: The Young Man Of Providence is a 43 minute dramatized biographical broadcast that aired on BBC Radio 4 on September 10, 1983.

There’s currently a direct download of an MP3 available HERE and it’s also available over on RadioArchive.cc via |TORRENT|.

Directed by Shaun McLaughlin

Cast:
Narrator … Hugh Burden
Lovecraft’s letters … David March
Excerpts from the stories … Blayne Fairman and Garrard Green

[also via Lovecraft eZine and HPLovecraft.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis