Posts Tagged ‘Lovecraft’

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PseudoPod 527: We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between The Stars

“We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between the Stars” originally appeared in WHISPERS FROM ABYSS 2. This story is set in the same universe as Venice Burning, which was podcast on Pseudopod in 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:03 — 29.0MB)

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Show Notes

Pseudopod wants to direct your attention to a project by one of our Authors, Greg Stolze. This is a good time to go back and relisten to episode 317, Enzymes.

YOU is a novel, set in the universe of the democratic horror game Unknown Armies, which pits readers against a book that hates them while situating them in the person of a middle-aged businessman named Leo Evans.

Leo is divorced, a fan of racquet sports, and a cultist of the Necessary Servant—a quasi-religion he freely admits seems silly, except for the way it grants him extra senses and paranormal abilities. The chief cultist, however, is his ex-wife, and the two of them clash over a key question of what it means to truly “serve” with integrity.

In the process of hashing all this out, Leo must survive a couple attempts on his life, come to grips with an enchantment that makes him hate the person he previously loved most, and deal with lingering issues between himself and his son.

This novel is Kickstarting in February, check the trailer at www.gregstolze.com/you

by A.C. Wise

 

“I’m one of the ones who remembers what it was like before R’lyeh rose. Before New Orleans sank. Before Venice burned. When Mi Go first screamed through the space between the stars, and when Shoggoths last in the dooryard bloomed. For the record, it doesn’t make me one of the lucky ones.”

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PseudoPod 526: The Great American Nightmare

PseudoPod 526: The Great American Nightmare is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:57 — 33.7MB)

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Show Notes

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato

“They who can give up essential liberty for temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

The Great American Nightmare

by Moaner T. Lawrence

The sky over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was clear and blue at 12:00PM EST on Friday, January 20th, 2017. At 12:01, a fleet of Secret Service byakhee swarmed over the abstract visage of what was once The White House. Faster and faster, they beat their jet black wings, until the unholy force tore a hole in the sky. It became a swirling vortex, and the composer Erich Zann, considered missing for over 120 years, began conducting a chorus of six-foot albino penguins, alongside the United States Marine Band to a discordant rendition of Hail, Columbia. Opposite the band, a crowd of three million attendants held fast to a double-reinforced security railing, or anything else they could grab onto, so as to bear witness to the spectacle before them without being sucked into the portal forming above.

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PseudoPod 318: Venice Burning

“Venice Burning” originally appeared in FUTURE LOVECRAFT, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, and published by Innsmouth Press. The book has since been reissued as a trade paperback by Prime Books, and is available in many major bookstores. It was actually written in Venice, and the character of Josie is inspired by a real jazz singer the author saw performing at a restaurant there.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:06 — 29.7MB)

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Venice Burning

by A.C. Wise

A floating city, a sinking city, a drowned city; there isn’t much difference, really.

When R’lyeh rose, it rose everywhere, _everywhen_. Threads spiral out, stitching past to present to future. There are ways to walk between, if you’re willing to lose a part of yourself. Most people aren’t; it’s my specialty.

I stand on a pier, eyes shaded against the water’s glare. It’s 2015, by the smell – diesel and cooked meat, early enough that such things still exist. It might as well be 2017, or 3051. But this year is where my client is, so I wait, sweating inside a black, leather jacket, watching slick weeds stir below lapping waves.

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PseudoPod 307: That Ol’ Dagon Dark

PseudoPod 307: That Ol’ Dagon Dark is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:58 — 24.8MB)

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That Ol’ Dagon Dark

by Robert MacAnthony

OL’ DAGON DARK

He’s never heard of such a thing. Still, the aroma is enticing. He checks the box and the shelf, but there is no price.

The shopkeeper is still in back, and all is silent within the store. Iverson contemplates the tobacco, then pulls a small plastic bag from behind a basket of pipes atop the shelves. He quickly loads what he deems to be two ounces of the blend into the bag, and makes his way out of the humidor. He leaves an adequate amount of money on the counter – more than adequate really, quite generous for a place like this – and pushes back out into the rain.

He doesn’t see the shopkeeper sitting just behind the curtain, doesn’t see the man slide into a crouch, back against the wall, and bury his face in his hands.

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PseudoPod 152: Hometown Horrible

PseudoPod 152: Hometown Horrible is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:08 — 17.4MB)

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Hometown Horrible

The Legacy of a Wisconsin Writer Revisited

by Matthew Bey

“So much stays behind when a man dies,” Bestlonic says. “You could rebuild Finch from what we have left of him.”

Together we walk the three blocks to downtown Chippewa Falls, and he tells me why Finch is the greatest writer who ever lived.

We talk mainly about the “Biter” series. It doesn’t take much to get Bestlonic raving about these stories. The most cited story in the series, the eponymous “Biter,” tells the tale of a man who finds a note in his jacket pocket that prompts him to eat his own extremities, methodically avoiding blood loss and undue trauma in the process. The story is nearly 30,000 words long, surprisingly little of which is gruesome depictions of auto-cannibalism. The bulk of the text concentrates on the “unthinkable horror” written on that slip of paper. Finch never states outright what that might be, presumably because it would cause the readership to imitate the hero’s compulsive mutilation. He merely reveals that the phrase is twelve words long, and we should be very careful what we read.