We’re back and we’re on a bus journey. Sure, this is a bone-rattler, but that’s like combining a gym visit and a massage, right? It certainly seems to have done the other passengers good. Have you seen how long their arms are? And it must do wonders for the feet as well. We can’t even imagine where they buy their shoes. The only question is whether the jolting is also responsible for those odd creases in their necks. It must be. There can’t be any other reasonable explanation.
Main Topic: The Shadow Over Innsmouth part 2
This is the second part of our multi-episode exploration of HP Lovecraft’s classic weird tale, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Last time, we explored the origins of the story and then joined Robert Olmstead for a quick tour of Newburyport.
Now, moving into chapter 2 of the story, we catch Joe Sargent’s bus from Newburyport, travel across the bleak seaside landscape, and then enjoy the faded grandeur of Innsmouth’s buildings. Come for the salt marshes, stay for the extended discussion of roof architecture!
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
- Flotsam and Jetsam on How We Roll
- Salt marsh
- Kingsport
- “The Strange High House in the Mist” by HP Lovecraft
- In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
- Widow’s walk
- Car Wars
- A guide to roof types
- Necronomicon Providence
- Monument Circle, Indianapolis
- Gen Con
- Prohibition
- “The Thing on the Doorstep” by HP Lovecraft
- “The Dreams in the Witch-House” by HP Lovecraft
- The House of Eliot
- British Government removing street signs during wartime
- Dad’s Army
- Arithmetic and geometric progressions
- “The Conqueror Worm” by Edgar Allan Poe
- Something About Cats and Other Pieces by HP Lovecraft
- The New Annotated HP Lovecraft edited by Leslie Klinger
- Aphantasia
- HPLHS Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft audiobook
- “The Dunwich Horror” by HP Lovecraft
- Disappointments rooms
- “Pickman’s Model” by HP Lovecraft
News
Paul at Grogmeet
Paul will be attending Grogmeet 2023 at Fanboy 3 in Manchester, between the 10th and 12th of November.
Scott Livestreaming at Symphony Entertainment
Scott will be joining our good friends Bridgett Jeffries and Graham Walmsley over at Symphony Entertainment for a short livestream on the 1st of November. The stream will begin at 3 PM EDT/7PM GMT and run for around one hour.
Two New Arcs on Ain’t Slayed Nobody
Scott has also appeared in two new arcs over at Ain’t Slayed Nobody. “Eclipse of the Heart”, written and run by Rina Haenze, is now out in its entirety. This bloody romp through an ’80s high school prom features Camille Brouard, Kathryn Edmonds, cuppycup, and Scott.
Cuppycup and Scott also appear in “The Waking Children”, alongside Bridgett Jeffries and Nic Rosenberg. This is a mini-arc written and run by Malevolent creator Harlan Guthrie, which will be released weekly on the ASN feed, starting from the 24th of October.
Eldritch Stories
Paul reads Porch Pirate, a story by Mike Mason on Mason and Fricker’s Eldritch Stories. Also, Mike and Paul chat about various topics in Eldritch Extras – wherein Paul reads aloud from a blasphemous tome! Look out for a new story from Paul on Thursday.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More
I know that none of you read these comments anymore, but I am not on twitter nor facebook, and do not like discord…
Re: your discussion of visual imagination. I have hyperphantasia, I would fathom, if I have anything…it’s probably useful to differentiate between visual memory and imagination here. My memory is certainly not eidetic sadly, and it is less accurate than I would have liked to admit, but it leans more to the impressionistic. What it is, is vivid. Nightmarishly vivid. And I have no trouble calling up faces of people of people I have not seen in decades, and having seen photos of them after the fact, I am pretty spot-on. I’m not sure that has granted me any special enjoyment of the passage in question in “Shadow” however…I am pretty bad at directions unless I make an effort to memorize them. I think I just conjured up the equivalent in my head, and I did enjoy the sense of wandering very much.
I will admit that when I see an artist’s representation of a textual description I know well, I’m almost always disappointed (it never lives up to my internal image); when I see a powerful SF or fantasy artist’s depiction of some landscape, I find it fascinating. Yet on the whole, I have less pull towards visual art than any other art. Sad.
Let me also add…I met Brian Courtemanche at Necronomicon 2019. Turns out we grew up about 30 minutes apart (I have, sadly, mostly lost my accent though), and I also know the places and landscapes in question…marshes on the north shore of Boston, bogs and swamps on the south shore…and all of estuarial Cape Cod. They have been the images and landscapes I came back to again and again when I have invented game settings, or imagined them. They are incredibly powerful and memorable and haunting. If any of you get a chance, you should pay a short trip to one of the coastal areas Lovecraft knew.
What is the podcast that advertises on the show? I don’t see it mentioned, and I have searched with various methods and have not turned it up.