SS5 O1 The Dark Age

Season Five kicks off with Smith's post-apocalyptic tale of science vs. savagery. We talk Richard A. Lupoff, Dr Who, barbarism, the perils of science, 80s TV ads and gargling port.
Reader: Simon Frazier Nash
Favourite words: Sybaritic. plashing, coign, ploughshares, dogwood.
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SPEAKER_03 0:09

Strange shadows.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

The laboratory was like a citadel. It stood on a steep eminence, overtopped only by the loftier mountains, and looked out across numberless fir-thick valleys and serried ridges. The morning sunlight came to it above peaks of perennial snow, and the sunsets burned beyond a rivered plain, where forest saplings had taken the battlefields of yesteryear, and skin-clad savages prowled amid the mounded ruins of Syberitic cities. They who had built the laboratory in the years when Earth's loftiest civilization was crumbling swiftly, had designed it for a fortress of science, in which something of man's lore and wisdom should be preserved throughout the long descent into barbaric night. The walls were of squared boulders from a glacial moraine, and the woodwork was of mountain cedar, mightily beamed as that which was used in Solomon's temple. High above the main edifice there soared an observatory tower from which the heavens and the surrounding lands could be watched with equal facility. The hilltop had been cleared of pine and fir. Behind the building there were sheer cliffs that forbade approach, and all around it a zone of repellent force which could be made lethally destructive if desired, maintained by machines that conserved the solar radiations and turned them into electricity. The dwellers in the laboratory looked upon themselves as the priests of a sacred trust. They called themselves the custodians.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Greetings, traveller, and welcome, welcome indeed to season five, episode one of Strange Shadows, the Clark Ashton Smith Podcast. Yes, we are back after our short summer break, and uh we're cracking into volume five of the collected fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, which is entitled The Last Hieroglyph. The voice you just heard at the start there was friend of the show and bass player extraordinaire Simon Frazier Nash, reading the opening of today's story. I'm one of your hosts, Rob Poyton.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

And I'm the other one, Tim Mendies. Yes, it's good to be back. It's good to be diving into more Clark Ashton Smith. And the first thing I have to say about this is this is a very strange one to open the open the um anthology with, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

It is, yeah. Even Smith said this was how can we put it?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Not his best work. Oh we'll get on to that. I've I've found a letter, it's an August Derlith letter. I've found it, so I'll give you I'll give you the full quote in a bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Now we haven't been totally idle while we've been away because of course we had the Innsmouth Literary Festival just a couple of weeks back now. The day went swimmingly exceedingly well. There's a full report up on the Innsmouth Book Club. Went up last week. There's a couple of videos floating around as well. There's a particularly nice one from Jules Burt as well, where he also interviews our guests of honour, Stephen Jones and Les Edwards, and Trevor Kennedy as well, who brought with him that excellent Phantasmagloria Innsmouth Special Edition.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yes, and if you want to learn more about that, we did an ep we did an episode where we interviewed him on over on the Innsmouth Book Club podcast. So yeah, you can check that out now. Yeah, it was a cracking day all told. It all went off rather swimmingly. We had a good chat with our guests of honour. We had great panels and loads of traders and a good old knees up in the evening. It was uh yeah, you can't go wrong, really.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, splendid stuff all around. Yeah, and our big announcement on the day was next year we're expanding. The ILF will be five years old next year. So we're going for a full weekend, October the first to the third, and we're changing venue as well to Cranfield University, which is midway between Bedford and Milton Keynes, and it's a full-on business conference center. There's lots of conventions and stuff is being held here, held there. So it gives us uh a little bit of room to spread our tentacles.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

Absolutely. Yeah, I wonder how long it is before people start trying to rename it miscatonic.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Oh, there's an idea. I wonder if they mind if we change the sign outside. Yeah, we we do just for one you know, for one weekend we'll put a put a nice little banner over it, you know, miscatonic. So keep an eye out in all the usual places and on the socials for that. We'll probably be getting into launching that just after Christmas. But back to the present. Well, back to the future, actually. Did uh wasn't there a was there a film called that? Rings a bell, rings a bell. Because uh we're in Smithian post-apocalyptic territory, and I think you're right, it's quite unusual. I think I said to you earlier, if I didn't know this was Smith when I was reading it, I wouldn't have pegged it as a Smith story.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

No, um, I honestly had I had a moment where I was like, Am I reading the right thing here? Because yeah, it doesn't feel very Smith. I have I have questions which we'll get to in time. The chief one is when it is is this or is this another far future dying earth situation? I could I couldn't figure out where it fits, if it fits anywhere, or if it's just an uh a complete anomaly. And I think it is the latter, and I think as we'll get to when we get to the publication, I think it's because it's um it's one of those he was trying for a new market. Ah right. I think that's I think that's what it is. But it's a really weird one, and and if I'd have been compiling these this collection, I'd have stuck it at the end of the previous volume because it's such a weird one to open this final collection. I'd have kicked it off with the death of Malagris, which is one of the best stories. Indeed. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Of course. Yeah. Kick it off with a bang, right? Yes, uh, interesting choice. So this is uh volume five in the Nightshade book series, and we have, of course, another introduction. This time it's by Richard A. Loophoff, who was uh a New York author of science fiction and the weird and the horror. I think he started in the 1950s, so he was kind of that second wave of the Lovecraft circle.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Yeah, he was a contemporary of Campbell and Lumley and all that, and he did some great Cthulhu Mythos stuff. Yes. Like the doom that came to Dumwitch and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Um Yeah, in fact, I I read that not that long ago. I had that that whole collection.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, yeah, I've got the collection. It's actually really there's some really good stuff in it, some really grim, sort of post-apocalyptic stuff in there. Um, we should cover, we should cover Mr. Loop on the IBC at some point.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah, we haven't, yeah. And and the other one is Lovecraft's book, right? Where Lovecraft features the character, which is something we're going to be looking at doing a special on at some point as well.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah, yeah. I actually bought that last year at the IBC from Devon Bob. I bought a copy from Devon Bob along with um with Dagon.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

You know, the uh yeah, yeah, can't remember the name of the author name.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Nice. And uh in that introduction, Loupoff draws parallels between the big three, as he puts them. I thought it was quite nice, it's something we talk about a lot. All these weird Towers authors that uh have faded into obscurity, and some are now semi-obscure, but of course the big three remain head and shoulders. Uh, and it it draws interesting parallels between their lives, kind of similar circumstances in some respects.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Yeah, there's a nice there was a nice little quote that I picked up on in here uh of Smith saying that he considered himself more of an outsider than HPL, because while HPL is a is out of time, he's out of space and time. Nice. I liked that. Very Doctor Who of him.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Well, Lovecraft was very much in place, wasn't he? I am Providence. Yes, he was part of the fabric of his environment where Smith felt, yeah, I think a total outsider in all respects.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah, it's it's very interesting. It's also nice because he does name check quite a lot of authors from the Weird Tales things like Henry S. Whitehead and Eli Coulter, Seabury Quinn, and E. Hoffman Price. So that's quite nice that some of these other guys got a bit of a shake in a lamb's tail, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and uh as as we said, that maybe a future project will be to explore some of the less well-known authors that appeared in Weird Towers. There's a rich scene to mine there, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah. I think we should actually look into this introduction as a bonus episode, because there's a lot of stuff in here about the parallels between their families and things like that, and their and their setup, like about there's a whole bit of him here about Lovecraft's father going mad and all this kind of stuff, and that Howard never married, but reportedly bragged of his sexual exploits and all this, and then about obviously about Smith and his uh so I think that'd be a nice little mini episode. So we'll go, we can go through because it's quite quite long, actually. It's a good like 15 pages long or something.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

So that's a good idea, yeah. We'll we'll we'll pencil that in for a bonus, yeah. Definitely, yeah. So the dark age is the opening story, it's about 12 pages long. Um, as I said, we're in post-apocalyptic sci-fi territory. How did the uh publication history go with this one?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Well, the details are a little bit sketchy on this one, because he wrote it with the idea of submitting it to Clayton's Astounding Stories, because by this time they'd changed the policy to accept a smattering of the weird. Unfortunately, by the time he finished it, uh, by May the 2nd, 1933, it was folding. This we've talked about this in several episodes uh of the last season. Right. Um basically the Clayton outfit was going under and they were selling things off, and it was all going tits up to use a British phrase. So, and it's it's unknown if he sent it at this point, as there's no record of it being rejected, but uh we kind of think it was. I mean, the general consensus is that he did, and it was rejected, because he spoke to August Derlith a couple of times about it, and this is where we get that little quote. This is in eccentric and practical devils, the letters of August Derlith and Clark Ashen Smith, and a letter dated May the 2nd, 1933. No news at all, at all. Clayton is evidently holding the flower woman for further consideration. I'm now sending him the Dark Age, which I consider my lousiest in many moons. Largely, no doubt, because of the non-fantastic plot, which failed to engage my interest at any point. The one redeeming feature is the final paragraph, which takes a sly underhanded crack at the benefits question mark of science.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

So there we go. Yes, I I I I can see that there is that sort of little sardonic twist at the end.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Yes. Yeah, it's got that smithy kind of twist to it, hasn't it? Which is always quite nice. And then there was a follow-up letter where he said, I've sent it, but I haven't heard anything back. So we can only assume it it was rejected or got or just got lost in the shuffle while things were being sold off and moved around and uh things like that. Later, a good couple of years later, Hugo the Rat, here he is, Mr. Mr. Gurns back, sold wonder stories to better publications on the first of February 1936. Mort Welsinger, who was later the editor of Superman in the Silver Age of Comics, yeah, he took over as editor of this uh lovely pulp magazine, and Smith sent it in around September 1937. And it was accepted and published in the April 1938 issue of the now titled Thrilling Wonder Stories, yeah, along with a brief essay entitled The Decline of Civilization. Now, I will read an excerpt of that at the end after the story because it has spoilers in it. So I'm not going to do it now, but it's a nice it's a nice little bit, it's a nice little chunk. It's uh yeah, it's worth it, it's worth reading out. I think our listeners will enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

And I think because it's not written in that usual Smithian language when it comes to favourite words, we're we're a little bit sparse, and I think we've got one or two we've probably mentioned before. But uh let's let's delve into that. What have you chosen, sir?

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah, I mean, I got three, and I'm pretty sure we've had two of them. But um Syberitic, I've got is the first one, which is fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure, basically self-indulgent, decadent, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

And I didn't know that's from a place called Sybaris, which was an ancient Greek colony in southern Italy, known for lavish feasts and a generally hedonistic lifestyle. Sounds like my kind of place. I like it. Do they do tours there?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah, I was gonna say, go for a nice winter break there. Sounds cracking.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

The one that stood out to me very early on was plashing. So splashing without the S. Now there's two meanings for this. The first is obvious, it's water splashing. Uh, this is one of those Smithian archaic terms, isn't it, where just one letter changes. So always quite nice. But it's also a way of building a hedge by intertwining the branches. Uh I've been out and done a bit of plashing this morning.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

See, I knew that I did know I knew that because this is that's interesting because that brings me into my next one. But I spent a lot of time as a kid on farms, like so most of my family were farmers, so I've heard that before. But what I haven't heard, and I probably should have done, was plow shares. Ah, which is the main cutting blade of a plow. Right. I've never heard it, it was always just called the blade. Yeah. There you go. That's my second one.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

And one I'm pretty sure we've had before is coin C O I G N, which is uh projection from a corner, like a sort of buttress architectural ch term. I'm pretty sure we've had that before.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, it's a nice little word though, and I'm pretty sure we've had this one before, uh, moraine, which is a mass of rocks and sediment carried down and deposited by a glacier, typically as ridges and at its edges or extremities.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

So basically all the crap that gets churned on by a glacier.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Those hungry glaciers. And the final one for me is dogwood, which I'd never heard of, although it is an English tree, uh particularly found in southern England. It was said that the timber was so hard they used it to make crucifixes. So dogwood, not familiar with that at all.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Now, interestingly, I've heard it, but not in any normal sense. I think Dogwood is referenced in at least one song by Christian Death.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Oh, right. Well, that time with the crucifix thing and that sort of stuff, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

I think it's in like, yeah, I think it's in like this is heresy or something.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah, Dogwood, it has a very hard bark as well. Right. I had to get that in.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Oh, I I totally didn't pick up on it. Christ, stealth puns. Christ, there we go. We're back, ladies and gentlemen. We're back.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Moving swiftly on. So, yes, we are in the future, and this is uh very much post-apocalyptic. Which uh I know you mentioned Zothic there, but I get the feeling this is pre-Zothic. This is more like uh, I don't know, a couple of hundred years after some sort of apocalypse, perhaps. That that sort of film.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah, it's a hard one, a nail, isn't it? It's hard to put in into sort of into the canon, so to speak, because while it hasn elements that would sort of fit with Zothik, they have elements that totally don't. And part of me does wonder because he was trying for that new like that magazine that had just started accepting weirds. So I guess he was trying, you know, it is it's a bit more Jack Vance, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, I I did get a bit of a dying earth feel from this. But I I thought as well, in a way, what he's done is taken that Zothique feel and made it science fiction. Because where where we start here with a description of this fortress, this is basically the wizard's tower. It's just that the wizards, in this case, the scientists. The walls were of squared boulders from a glacial moraine, and the woodwork was of mountain cedar, mightily beamed as that which was used in Solomon's temple. High above the main edifice there soared an observatory tower from which the heavens and the surrounding lands could be watched with equal facility. The hilltop had been cleared of pine and fir. Behind the building there were sheer cliffs that forbade approach, and all around it a zone of repellent force, which could be made lethal destructive if desired. So it's very much that kind of Malagris' tower, all that, uh, because I think even in one of those stories, the guy had to climb the cliff, didn't he to get access into the gardens and that sort of stuff. Uh to me, this is just swapping magic for science.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, very much. It's like right from the start. I mean, uh I know our regular correspondent Nils is going to be ticking off his bingo card already now, because this is why it this feels like uh a Tom Baker era, Doctor Who. Right. Because you have that mix of fantasy swords and all that kind of stuff with the science, specifically the 1977 story, The Face of Evil, the story which introduced Leela. Uh-huh. Because I'm getting a hell of a lot of parallels with this, because essentially the story of that is a spaceship crash lands on a planet, and the survey team goes out and then and never come back. Generations later, they're a tribe called the Sever team who have forgotten how to use technology, while as the people who remained have turned into a tribe called the Tesh, because the technicians, and it's all and there's a mad computer and all this kind of stuff. But that's kind of set up with the the tribe that have forgotten how to use tech and all that. It's very similar to this, I think.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yes, yes. And I'm I'm gonna see your Doctor Who and I'm gonna raise you a Star Trek.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

All we need now is a bit of filth.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Patience, patience, the filth is coming. Um, because these people who live in the tower call themselves the custodians, and there's eight couples, men and women, of the highest ability and attainment. So all the top scientists were put in this tower, presumably just as the apocalypse was occurring, to keep them safe and sort of guard humankind's knowledge, I guess. And I just thought the custodians, that's very Star Trek. We're we've got them living in their little isolated bit, and then we've got the inverted commas savages who who live on the planet's surface, and I can hear them speaking in that echoey voice, hello, captain, you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Yeah, I mean it'd be it's several Doctor Who's, in fact, for the same kind of thing. It's one of those well-worn tropes, especially of 60s, 70s sci-fi, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

It is, it is, and and granted, Smith may have been one of the first people to bring this sort of trope up, but it's even then it it does feel a little bit creaky, I think. Yeah, but having said that, we we do get the sort of Smithian world building to some extent because we get the history of what happened, our whole cities were wiped out, and empires were covered with low-lying clouds of death, you know. So we we we've got one or two nice phrases on here. I like that later into the hills and valleys below the laboratory, there came a wretched remnant of city dwellers from the plains. These people, already brutalized by their sufferings and hardships, held little commerce with the scientists. And then we get this that the generations passed, the custodians all intermarry, which raises some interesting questions. Indeed. Yeah. Just bringing in a slight bit of filth. Uh and they decrease in effect. They end up uh sterile, which is uh not very scientific of them, is it? No. The people below the the normal people outside revert more and more to a state of barbarism. So I thought now we're solidly into Robert E. Howard territory, aren't we?

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Yeah, but that's kind of what the thing. I mean, a lot of this, especially later when you've got the warring barbarian tribes and all that, did feel very Robert E. Howard. And yeah, but one thing I did pick up on this, though, which was incredibly Smithian, is the theme. The theme of decay and once proud civilizations falling into rack and ruin. I mean, that's a constant thread throughout a lot of Smith's work.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yes, very true, very true. And actually, I'll just notice another little Robbie Howard parallel here because we get this. For many years, none of the custodians were seen by the hill people. Sometimes by day, there were strange vapours that mounted to the clouds above the observatory. Which puts me in mind of a Conan story, People of the Black Circle, where you have this sorcerer's lair, Yimsha, and the local hill tribes occasionally see strange clouds being uh attracted to the tower there. So a very similar sort of imagery. Uh, and I guess as we said before, I I know these guys are all talking and sharing ideas, but sometimes they're all just riding the same wave, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, and I do I do like this uh the fact that these the sort of barbarian tribe uh started to see the custodians as actual demigods that wield mysterious, awful powers and working incomprehensible miracles. So few of them now dare to approach the environs of the building or to follow the wild boar and deer into the wooded valleys about it. So, yeah, that's why I'm that's one of the things I was thinking very much the face of evil, because that's how the sever team view the Tesh.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Right, yeah, yeah. But eventually one of these custodians comes down to see the people, a chap by the name of Atullos. And um we get a sort of little bit of detail here, but not very much. One of the most important things that is mentioned almost straight away by degrees he won their confidence, and afterward he mated with a woman of the tribe mated. There we go.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Yeah. I like how he's described that that he's uh described as like Prometheus bringer of fire to ancient mankind. He sought to enlighten these savages and undertook to reproduce for their benefit some of the inventions preserved in the laboratory. He told them nothing of his reasons for leaving the other custodians with whom he held no communication since joining the Hill people. Now, the implication for me, uh and knowing the fact that they're sterile, is that he's gone out there to have a bit of rumpo and procreate.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Right, yes, yes, which he is successful in, to be fair. Yeah, indeed. So is is continuing the uh the family line, so to speak, is is making sure that the uh the knowledge doesn't die with that last generation.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Well, it's what a lot of the uh aristocratic families would do. They would they would they would seek a peasant girl to join the let join the ranks to to spread the line and stop the sort of dead decay, you know. I mean, so in that respect, it's very sort of historically accurate, really.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yes, yes. And we we do get this mention, it always makes me cringe a little bit. In fact, there's something else that makes me cringe a little bit later on, but we'll get to that. Is um the savages, this idea that if humans are left alone, they revert to savagery, that kind of Lord Lord of the Flies way of thinking, indeed, yeah, which uh to me was always a very public school attitude.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah, I mean it is one of those very outdated look ways of looking at things, isn't it? That without the you know, without the guidance of their bettors, that you know it's that it's that, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Whereas in fact, if you look at communities who are living in the wild, they thrive on community because they have to. Indeed. If you're an outsider in that environment, then you know you're done for, aren't you, really? Pretty much. So Atulos starts teaching them all these uh secrets of uh agriculture and even gets on to smelting and machinery, and he makes long hazardous journeys to obtain a supply of certain elements lacking in that region, and from one of those journeys he never returns. And it was believed he had been slain by the warriors of a hostile and very brutal tribe upon whose territory he had intruded in his search. Fortunately, he has sired a child, he leaves behind him a boy called Torquane. I kept reading that as Tarquin and going into chap territory.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

So I kept seeing this this this barbarian warrior as Tarquin the chap.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah, yeah. And of course, once he is gone, then the tribe have all this stuff, but they don't really know what to do with it, they don't understand how any of it works. Now, Artulos had started training his son in all the lore of the custodians, but he was only four when Artulos have vanished. So he's not really taken much in at the age of four, even though he does seem to be hyper intelligent.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Yeah, but as he got older, he he sort of basically decides and takes it upon himself, doesn't he, to try and figure out the riddle of these machines and all that kind of stuff. It's like he's got some burning inner sort of drive to finish his father's work, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, yeah. Because we get yeah, slowly as his mind matured, there came to Torcaine an understanding of the altruistic aims of his father, who had dreamt of restoring the old sciences in a darkened world. Uh and I think obviously with the ending we mentioned, it's probably the sciences that are responsible for the destruction of the world as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

But you know, yeah, because it's never it's never explained, is it, what happened, what cataclysm has befallen this civilization. But when you get to the tower and you read about all these uh doodats and dynamos and things, you kind of think, oh, right, yeah, it's probably nuclear war, then in it.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

It it does say warfare that wiped out whole cities, and again, that clouds of death kind of thing implies uh yeah chemical warfare, basically. Yeah, yeah. Now, this is this is the other bit that made me cringe. Excelling in all barbarous sports, he became very hardy and self-reliant. Outwardly, he differed little from the other lads, except for his fairer skin and straighter features. There we go, shades of the Tolkien.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah, yeah, let's let's draw a veil over that.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Disappointing that and of course, he becomes a natural leader and often visits the cave that his father had used as a workshop. But of course, yeah, it's very difficult for him to understand any of the writings or any of the engines or chemicals that have been left behind. But he does naturally, I suppose, as he goes through this, think more and more about the guarded citadel from which his father had come down to join the tribes. From certain vantage points on the higher hills, he could see its observatory towers looming darkly above the cleared eminence. And of course, one day curiosity is going to get the better of him, so he goes to take a look. And we get this description of the place. It seems like not much has changed there, really. We've still got this grim, repellent fortress-like construction, rectilinear walls and square towers, the windows glimmered blankly, withholding all their secrets. In the building's front, an open doorway arched, beyond which, in silver flashes, Torcane discerned the leaping of fountains amid a sunlit court. So again, it still has that wizard tower feel to me.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

It does very much so. Very much so. And I like I like this next bit here, because you get the description of the sapling firs and pines that have been begun to invade the level, and but then you get this noise. Torquane heard a vengeful humming that might have been made by some invisible throng of bees. The sound maintained always the same position, the same pitch. Peering closely you saw that there was a yard-wide line of bare vacant soil running like a path amid the young conifers. And following the apparent course of the sound, this line he knew suddenly betokened the force barrier beyond which no man could pass. And the humming was the noise made by the repellent lethal power. I it's a nice description because uh lesser writers such as myself would just go, yeah, this is where the force barrier was, and the the the light there was a load of bones and shit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah, yeah, it it does, it does do the job well. Yeah. And he also finds here like a little allotment, right? And a flower garden. So signs of life. There are still people in this place. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Now I got to thinking on this because obviously we had when did when did Lovecraft write is it Walls of Eric's? Uh oh, I can't remember my head with the invisible barriers and all that stuff. I've got a feeling it was 30s.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

It was one of his ghost-written ones. Um yeah, I'm sure someone will correct us if we're wrong, but I think it was quite a later story because he was sort of shifting across the sci-fi as well, wasn't he? I think it was the the shadow out of time and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

I think it may have may have been after this then. I'll have to look into that. But I want to know who first came up with the concept of a force field.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Because it's an interesting, it's one of those sci-fi things that you just take for granted now. It's in everything, you know. Pretty much any sci-fi thing has a force field in it, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Well, again, very prominent in in the 50s, isn't it? And then in in again, into your Star Trek, how many times have they run somewhere and go, oh, and there's that little flash.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Doctor Who and and Star Wars, yeah all the doors on the bloody Death Star and all that, you know. Mr.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Stevens, he's my boss. Death Star canteen in the earth. Yes. So yeah, this scares him, this noise, so he runs off. But of course he returns, and the next time he sees one of the building's occupants. At a distance of no more than twenty yards from his hiding place, a girl was stooping above the violets and pansies in the trimly plotted flower garden. Torquane thought that he gazed upon a goddess, for among all the village girls there was none half so lovely and graceful as this incredible being. Clad in a gown of light April green, her hair falling in a luminous yellow cloud about her shoulders. She seemed to cast a brightness on the flowers as she moved among them.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

I'm sorry, I've got I've got to interject here in the next line, drawn by a strange fascination such as he had never before experienced. The raging horn.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

I thought this is this as well. This is almost like the Faye, isn't it? It is the fairy vision. She's dressed in green, she's radiant. This is like a supernatural being in a way.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Which which story is it? It's really early when he's in the woods, it's Averroyne, and he sees a woman and he sort of follows her. Oh. And it's one of his sort of liminal, spacey kind of stories.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Yes. Uh I think it's the one with the vampire and the shadow. The one it was that the vampire.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah, and the chateau. Yeah, the fa the fassa flamas or whatever it's called. Yes, I think you're right. It's very similar. Because we said that that point it was very sort of yeah, like satir elf, fairy, being fairy-led, all that kind of thing. Similar setup.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

And this is your liminal space, right? There's a very definite barrier here between one world and the next. So it's almost the definition of liminal. Yeah, absolutely. So he overcomes his fear, uh, his fear of the instant doom that his darin might perhaps have earned, which is quite a nice little phrase as well. And he raises his hand in a gesture of placation and steps forward. The girl watched him with palpable amazement, her eyes widening and her face paling, and then reddening as she grew aware of Torcaine's comeliness and the undisguised ardour of his gaze. Yeah, that and the huge tent in his uh his line cloth. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

He's got the horn and she's got the thirst, right? We know what's going on here.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

You must go away, she said, in words that differed somewhat from those of the dialect familiar to Torkane. But he understood the words, and to him their strangeness savoured of divinity. Without heeding the admonition, he stood like one enchanted. So that reinforces the idea that the custodians are demigods, and also that enchantment speaks to the fairy again as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Yeah, and she basically tells him to go away, but he tries to plead his case, doesn't he? I'm not a barbarian, he said proudly. I am the son of Archulas, the custodian. My name is Tokane. Can we not be friends? And get it on. Sorry, I added the last bit, just in case you were wondering. He did, just in case.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

But the mention of that name seems to trigger something because she sort of steps back in fear, and the humming of the barrier deepened loud and angry as the buzzing of a million wasps, and Torcane felt in his flesh an electric tingling, such as he had felt during violent thunderstorms. All at once the air was lined with sparks and bright fiery threads, and was swept by a wave of ardent heat. Before Torquane, the little pines and firs appeared to wither swiftly, and some of them leapt into sudden flame. And uh this is this is the father, right? Oh I hearing what's going on and doing what fathers throughout the ages have done, seeing off this young uh rascal who's sniffing around his daughter.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

I thought that was masterfully done in the fact that he described it as the buzzing as bees when it was more placid. Because he runs his hand up to it and it doesn't actually injure him. But now it's got murderous, it's the buzzing of wasps. That's nice observation. I liked that. That was that's very subtly done, but gets it a point, it gets the point across. Because if you heard bees like buzzing around a flower bed, it's kind of gentle. It's soothing, isn't it? Whereas you hear a wasp in a pub garden, it you hear stripey murder bastard. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

So off he goes, he flees, she flees in, he flees away. Yeah, and uh, of course, he has to go back, right? This now becomes the obsession, which again is a fairly common thing in Smith stories, and he doesn't tell any of the other of his tribe, his fellow tribe, about this. He just goes on these solitary expeditions that always seem to end up in the region of the laboratory, and he almost starts sort of spying on her as she's working in the garden.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Yeah, he does develop some kind of stalker-like tendencies here, doesn't he? For lurking around the foliage, probably with a raging stiffy, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Well, I I did like this. This is this is Smith's uh acute observation of human nature, right? It seemed to Torcaine, pondering with a lover's logic, that the girl had not disliked him. So, you know, the lover's logic, because he's in love or lust with her, then well, obviously, she must feel the same about me. Because I thought that was a nice little touch.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

That is a very yeah, that's really nicely done. And yeah, that speaks to the throughout history, doesn't it? It's like, oh, she wanted me to uh come and lurk around her house at night.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Unfortunately, yes, yes, it very with very horrible results quite often. Yeah, yeah. And I I thought this bit was interesting as well, because you know, they say romance is dead, so we've got this potentially creepy, stalking, peeping tom thing, but also we get this mating with a daughter of the custodians, he would win admittance to that world of light and knowledge from which his father had come, that world which had tantalized his dreams. Tirelessly he schemed and plotted, trying to devise a way in which he could pass the false barrier. So, you know, there's another reason as well. This is his way back into the world of science and light and knowledge. So you know, it's a little bit kind of self-serving, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Well, it's classic 17th, 18th century social climbing, isn't it? It's almost Jane Austen like. If you think about it, it's somebody wanting to marry above their station to you know get the privileges that that will bring.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

And almost in in a sense, is um, you know, the old noble families, there was always the bastard son, wasn't there? Ah, yes, indeed. With the royal families, I mean that's the basis for a lot of stories, you know, your count of Monte Cristo and all those kind of things, potentially.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

Well, even Game of Thrones, you know. I mean, that's full of bastards. That bastard. Bastard. I'm glad you picked up on that. Gotta get a short bead nod in.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Gotta get that in. Gotta get that in. He would have been a tulos in this, wouldn't he? Because he dies on page four. So you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Anyway, this continues for a while. He even tries to climb the cliffs behind the laboratory. Too difficult, doesn't make that. But revisiting the woods one day, he finds that there's a silence. The buzzing has gone. There's a cessation of that humming noise which would signalize the presence of the barrier.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

So now he can get in. Yeah, I like how this is I like how this is described now. Alert and vigilant, the boy still watched, the forest's afternoon shadows began to lengthen, invading the laboratory grounds. Screaming harshly, a mountain blue jay flashed from the pine above Tolcane, and flew unharmed across the area that the lethal screen had formerly barred to all ingress of living things. An inquisitive squirrel raced among the saplings over the bare path of the barrier and chittered impudently in a plot of young corn and beans. I like that, the the observation of nature, because that's the thing, isn't it? If nature finds a way in, it will, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

Yes, yes, that's very nice. That's almost like nature reclaiming its territory, isn't it? Indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

And obviously, I I don't know about the fauna of Auburn, but I'd imagine there's squirrels running about all over the place where he had his cabin, you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Yes, yeah. Well, you the the landscape does feel familiar, doesn't it, in that sense. Yeah. Well that's why I'm forests and everything.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yeah, well, that's why at this point I was wondering if this was like future Auburn rather than Sarthik.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Well, the the the kind of rocky terrain and the cliffs and all that would fit into that as well. Indeed.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Yeah. So he knows the barriers that have gone. Now we get a sudden switch in viewpoint. Varia, we cannot repair the generators, said the aged Farbar to his daughter. The work is beyond my strength or yours. Also, metals are required which we cannot procure in their native state and can no longer make with the weakening atomic transformers. Robots in disguise. Sooner or later, the savages will learn that the false barrier has ceased to exist. They will attack and will find only an old man and a girl to oppose them. The end draws near.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

I'm glad you read it in that voice, because that's how I that's how I read it. There's more than you read.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

But that there's not much faith in his fellow humans, is there there? No, no. You know, maybe if you would have made contact with these people a while ago and showed them things. Is this like um so with the wizard, quite often it's gold. Yeah. But there's a greed here, but the greed is knowledge. This knowledge is mine, and we're not going to share it. You'll only attack us if you can.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah, it's human nature, isn't it? It's but just with different ways of doing it, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

So, of course, this is the last of the custodians and his daughter, the the woman who Torcane has been stalking. But she, of course, knows his background. What of the boy who calls himself the son of Atullos? Never cried Farbar in his quavering voice, grown loud and deep with an old anger. He is a mere savage like the rest of mankind. Atullos, whom I drove from the laboratory because of his evil passion for your mother. So I I thought this was interesting because he's calling these other people savages, but he's been hit by this jealousy, might have been justified, might not. Yeah. What was what was his response? They just expelled this guy from the laboratory, they just chuck him out. It's rather uncivilised, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yeah, because I mean my brain instantly went, Well, is this just a love triangle? And actually you're the bastard in the situation, either.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Or you know, is is is she even his daughter?

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Well, this is this is another thing, isn't it? And is this why he's so like, no, you cannot mate with him because the cycle will continue, because that's why they're in this fix that they're in already.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Yes, yes. You would think if he was thinking rationally about this, this is the chance to renew the stock, perhaps, and yeah, you know, continue, but he seems very bitter and angry about everything.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

So Torkane is back the next day, and now he can approach the building. Boldly he went forward into the gardens and followed a little path that led to the shut portals. Coming in plain view of the windows, he laid his bow and arrows on the ground as a token of his peaceful intent. Well, that's not going to do him any good at all, is it? Because the old man leans out of a window, pokes out a long metal tube, and tries to shoot him.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Yeah, I like this. They're sort of firing firebolts at him, but because he's a bit old and infirm, none of them hit him, and he's just sort of doing a storm tree at this point and just shooting clubs at him.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

So Torquay naturally retreats, but this is where now we get the uh entrance of another party or parties, because as he entered the woods he was startled by a human shape that drew back stealthily into the shadows. Torquay knew the man for a stranger. He wore no garment except a wolf skin and carried for weapon only a crude spear tipped with flint. His features were brutal and degraded, and his forehead was striped with red and yellow earths, identifying him as a member of that extremely degenerate tribe which was believed to have slain Torquayne's father. So this is the wheel turning full circle now. Uh, and we can speculate that maybe his father going to these people is what has sort of led him here a few years later.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Yeah. Very possibly, yeah. I like I like his very chappish response to this. Torkane hailed the man but received no answer. So he's like, hello, good evening.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Can we interest you at a spot of tea? When the guy runs off, he fires an arrow after him. Yeah, it's a bit inimical to fellowship, isn't it? And when he goes back to the village, he feels very uneasy about this, and as he's watching over the next hours and days, he sees a lot of these tribesmen gathering silently and secretly around the village. Although they do seem they seem to be interested in the laboratory because they're lurking up there as well, and it looks like they're planning an attack upon the building. So up to now he's not said anything to his fellow tribes folk, but with this threat of danger, he calls them all together and tells them everything is that has happened. A deed such as this would ill become the son of a tulos. I will take no woman against their will. Rather would I have you aid me in protecting the custodians who are now few and feeble against the marauding of this alien tribe. And uh they seem quite happy to go along with this. In fact, they get about a hundred of them, I think, which is you know quite a substantial number for a tribe.

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Yeah, and he's found himself the leader of a small army, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Oh, this is where we get the gunpowder, isn't it, as well? It is indeed, yes. This was uh a small earthen jar filled with grey powder, which he had taken from a Tulas' workshop years before, during his boyhood, prompted by a spirit of crude experimentation. He had dropped a pinch of the powder on a bed of coals and had been startled by the loud explosion that resulted. So it sort of kept this to one side. Uh and now, well, we we've got uh potentially uh some sort of bomb or grenade.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yeah, pretty much, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 48:54

IED. Yeah, so they all head off now, don't they? They can basically trooping through the woods. This reminds me a little bit of a film like uh Apocalypto or something like that. That's that sort of feel about it.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm getting I am just all the way through this, I I'm seeing it in that 1970s TV colour palette. It it's so Tom Baker iridot who that's all I'm seeing because uh keep going through, even though I'd already mentioned like the face of evil, I'm going, oh well that bit reminds me of the of the mutants, or that bit reminds me of the savages, or that bit reminds me of the yada yada yada. Oh god, yeah. I'm just getting flashbacks.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

So they find this enemy tribe sort of smashing the door in with the battering ram of uh the laboratory. So they're all nicely bunched together, and he's got his uh homemade hand grenade, which he now chucks.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Not the holy hand grenade, the homemade hand grenade. Oh and taketh thy pin and blow thy enemies into little bits.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Just remember to count your fingers after. Yes. Then the jar flung with all his strength exploded with a great flash that lit the entire scene, together with a deafening detonation as of mountain thunder. Torcane, who had been prepared for some violent result, was hurled backward to the ground with stunning force. The besiegers fled on all sides in dire disorder. Some were speared in the darkness by Torquay's men, the rest scattered amid the pines with frightful howls. Thus, for the first time since the beginning of the dark era, gunpowder was used in battle. I suppose we could say that's the appliance of science, couldn't we, there? And interesting that its its main use again here has been to kill people.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

What advert was that from? It was a it was an 80s, 90s TV advert. It's the appliance of science. That's it, Zanusi. That's it. Oh well. It's like I always remember the foursprung dork technique.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Hello, Tosh. Got a Toshiba.

SPEAKER_02 51:09

Yeah, yeah. Is it live or is it Memorex?

SPEAKER_01 51:14

So, what we now have is a scene of uh and again, Smith, he doesn't overdo it on the gore or anything, but he does talk about the dismembered bodies lying strewn around a garden. They keep watch on the building, but no one comes out, and a tomb-like silence hung upon the building. Earliest dawn, Torquane, accompanied by two of his warriors, venture to enter the courtyard. And this is very much that walk through the wizard's tower now, through the laboratory we we get in most of his stories like this. But this one the description is fairly sort of perfunctory, isn't it? Really? We get a globe of mysterious blue light, and that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Yeah, I wonder because we don't know a lot about Lathby found, we don't know a lot about the publication, and Smith didn't talk about it to Derleth. Obviously, by the time it was published, HPL had died. So we don't know whether it was edited heavily or if he had to make cuts or anything like that. But this feels like you know, you know, we've we've made that observation where the stories that just get accepted and don't get revised are tend to be full of this Baroque language and all this kind of stuff, and then when they've been revised, a lot of that is stripped out. So I'm wondering if this is one of the ones that he's basically took the shears to.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Yeah, yeah, could be, couldn't it? Yeah. I mean, we do get the the place is crowded with unknown, intricate machines, tall dynamos tower to the skylighted roof, wooden benches and shelves, huge and strangely shaped vessels and vials and beakers filled with hueless or coloured liquid, gleaming silent motors bulked in the corners. So we do get a little bit of that, which I always think the um that the best example of that was the Colossus of Elorne, the description of the necromancers there.

SPEAKER_02 53:12

Yeah, I think the difference is that yeah, hueless or coloured liquids, and down here we get glow of blue lamps. So that that to me says this has been edited because when has Smith ever just said blue?

SPEAKER_01 53:27

That's very, yeah, very true. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Not porphyrous or anything like that, is it? Yeah, exactly. And in the midst of all this paraphernalia, an old man sat before one of the vial-laden tables in a chair of cedar wood. I I thought this was nice. The light of sunless morning, livid and ghastly, mingled with the glow of blue lamps on his sunken features. That's a nice description.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

Very visual.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Yeah, and the girl is beside him. We come as friends, cried Torquayne, dropping his bow on the floor. He likes dropping his bow, doesn't he? And uh the response of this from the old man is to snatch up a glass vial of water clear liquid and drink it. And then, after a single convulsive shudder, he rested limply in the chair, his head lolling on his bosom, and his body seemed to sag and shrivel beneath its garments. So you might think, okay, well that kind of gets an obstacle out of the way, doesn't it? Yep. But alas, this is Smith, so This is Smith. So it has to get even grimmer, yeah. For an instant, with dilated eyes and pallid features, the girl turned again toward Torkane. It seemed that she hesitated, then, draining the remainder of the hewless liquid from the glass in her hand, she fell to the floor like a toppling statue. Uh I wonder if statues is a little reference back to the uh Maze of the Enchanter. So obviously they were I figure out that this clear liquid is poison, and we get this sort of uh sad reflection from Torquane. Never would he retrieve the mysterious lore of the custodians, or understand their machines, or read their ciphered books. It was not for him to finish the Promethean labours of Otulos and re-illuminate the dark world with science. These things, with a Gelvaria for mating instructress, he might have done. And this slightly odd ending. I thought this was strange. I thought this was strange. I really did. Because we've got that, oh woe is me. Uh is quite he seems a bit upset that she's dead. He seemed more upset that now he can't get won't be able to understand all this stuff. But this is this is how it ends. Still, though he knew it not in his sorrow and frustration, there remained other things. The clean, sweet lips of the simple hill girl who would bear his children, the wild free life of man warring on equal terms with nature and maintaining her laws obediently, the sun and stars unclouded by the vapours of man's making, the air untainted by his seething cities.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

Now I this is pure conjecture on my part, and it we've I've just been talking about it. About I think that he had to revise this. Obviously, we don't know whether he did or not, because when he's talking to Derleth in that letter that I read, he was saying about the last chap the only thing he liked in the story was the last chapter. Uh the last was the last paragraph. Right. It's the only bit he liked, and he's saying it was about the the benefits of science. Now that's the paragraph before, isn't it? About never would he retrieve the mysterious lore and all this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, or or is he being kind of ironic about you're you're gonna live this life untainted by science, which is all very well and good until you get toothache, isn't it? You know, yeah. May I mean maybe, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

It's just it's a funny old story, this one.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Yeah, yeah. We we have that little cruel twist at the end, which is not uncommon, but then oh, you know what? Actually, it's okay. It that that takes a lot of the sting out of the the the sad part, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 57:38

Really, yeah. But maybe that was it, maybe he did that consciously because of the market he was going markets he'd be going for. Maybe that's maybe they wouldn't have gone for something that ended so downbeat, you know.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yes, that's true. And I wonder if there was a question at that time. Well, we're living through AI sort of shit at the moment. So um was this the start of that questioning of science because we're just coming into the nuclear age um and we know what horrors that was going to unleash. Indeed. I I wonder if that sort of period maybe Edward Victorian seemed to be all about science and progress and religion being swept away. Edwardian and and particularly after the horrors of World War One seems to be a bit more actually, is is this science really good? We get almost that return that people like William Morris and Lear and and those sort of people, um, Alice in Wonderland and that kind of thing. Almost a reversion to the natural world.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Yeah, that's an interesting thought. Yeah, because I mean those interwar years, it was just, you know, as you would imagine, it was just like paranoia, wasn't it? And like I mean, because if you look at how technology advanced in those years, it was mind-meltingly quick. Yeah, yeah. You know, you went from okay, we've got gunpowder and all this kind of stuff, and we've just about got planes in the sky, to now we've got bloody self-propelling missiles and uh doodle bugs, and we're about split the atom and all this kind of stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Yeah, we think about it. My my Nan uh on my mother's side was born in 1900. And she was in late 90s when she passed. So she went from bicycles to Apollo rockets in a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

That's mental, innit, when you think about it like that. I mean, if you even if you just go from the start of the industrial revolution, think about how long there was before that to where we are from that to now.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Yeah, very if if you're a rural person, particularly. Yeah, um, I mean, of course, there were changes, but e even up into the 1920s, there was very little change. People were still using horse-drawn plows and that kind of thing, maybe even after that, you know. And it's kind of interesting to think that's the cycle, isn't it? We we get a we go through that, we get away from that, then it all goes horribly wrong, and we go back to that. Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

And that is basically in a nutshell a lot of Smith's stories, isn't it? It's yeah, we've gone too far. It's at the end of Escape from LA where he just turns everything off. It's like that, you know. We don't we just need to control out delete, I think, on a lot of things right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Yes, that's that's very true, very true. Yeah, and it is that wistfulness, which I mean, obviously, Lovecraft has his own version of that as well. Um, for better times, simpler times, but that just seems to be part of the human condition because this is what I get now. Like, I'm sure you think the same thing. Growing up as a kid, everyone was banging on about the 50s. Oh, it was uh now I have people telling me, Oh, the 70s was such a great time. Oh, yeah, mate, mate. Oh, we we didn't have division then, right? Thatcher and the miners, okay. Uh-huh. Oh, I was I was on the the picket line at Whoppin, you know. Let me tell you about division. And the the racial division, you know, cable street and all that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

And I mean, come on, yeah.

unknown 1:01:26

Don't be daft.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:27

Yeah, it's just a yearning for that past, which is always about 50 years ago, you know, that golden age.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

Strange, isn't it? It is very odd that it is very odd that think about it. In you know, in the future, people are gonna be wanting to hark back to now, and that's truly terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

It is, it is. What music are they gonna be talking about? That's the question, isn't it? You know, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

So, yeah, I mean, not one of Smith's best. It's by no, um, it's by no means a bad story. No, I enjoy it, it's a nice story. I can't fought any of it, it's it's an easy one to read, and you know, it all resolves itself and it sort of makes sense. But yeah, uh uh again, as we always say, even Smith on a bad day is still head and shoulders uh above a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:15

Yeah, it's definitely one of those that he would call it a filler story. It's quite short, it's quite simple, it's just one of those he wanted to churn out for a for a quick sale, but unfortunately that didn't happen and it took like two years to get published. But well, you got two years to be accepted and then another year to get published. So you got fifty-five dollars for it, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

Well, that's not bad for 12 pages, I guess, back then.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:43

And I wonder, obviously, he lived into the atomic age, and um was it early 60s he he b died? I don't know if I don't so I don't think he quite saw the moon landings, but it was it was fairly clear where everything was going. So you can only he I don't know if he really returned to this theme in any of his latter writings, of which there were uh not very many, right? Uh he sort of returned to writing in the 50s, I think, a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

Yeah, but there was it was literally a smattering of stories. There wasn't a lot, and a lot of that was only because August Dirleth wouldn't shut up and leave him alone. Basically, the reason we got like a lot of his later stories are only because August Dirleth demanded them, basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:32

I suppose there's frustration on both sides, isn't there, then? Because wouldn't you uh a a writer of that capability, please write some more. But he's been burned so many times by then, and all the things that have happened to him.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:47

No, I totally get it, but um, but but I mean the the main because obviously reading eccentric impractical devils, one of the main topics of conversation in the latter years of Smith's life was essentially I'm skin, I have no money. And Dirler saying, Well, write me something and I will sell it for you and get you some money. Oh, I don't want to. Oh for fuck's sake.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

Yeah, I guess, and there was no um, there was no circuit then, right? You couldn't go on a uh a talking tour or something like that. No, TED Talks with Clark Ashton Smith, how to write fantasy. I'm signing up for that one, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

Oh, these retreats, you know, right, you know, oh god. I've been invited to a couple of them, but I I just know they don't appeal. Yeah, so that's interesting because you've had fanzines, but fandom as we know it hadn't really started by then.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:45

It was quite embryonic. There was the like the first convention. First convention, which I think was 1940s, was it? Yeah. Stephen Jones mentioned it in the other. Indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

And we've we've mentioned it before, we've mentioned it before. Um, when we I think during one of our bonus episodes, because was it that guy who was writing to Lovecraft? Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah, it was um I can't forget his name now. But um, yeah, he was one of the organizers of it, and uh yeah, so I mean, fandom was in its embryonic stages, so yeah, he couldn't really get a living out of that because I mean it'd be sort of manual labour and a bit of sculpture, that was pretty much it, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

Yeah, yeah, a sad sad state of affairs, really. Yeah, very, very, very right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:34

Well, as I mentioned at the top during the publication history section, when this was published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1938, it was published with a very brief essay on the story entitled The Decline of Civilization. So here we go. This is Smith in his own words talking about the Dark Age. The Dark Age was written to illustrate how easily. Scientific knowledge and its resultant inventions could be lost to the human race following the complete breakdown of a mechanistic civilization such as the present one. The tale seems far from fantastic or impossible, and I've tried to bring out several points and to emphasize the part played by mere chance and by personal emotions and reactions. I have shown the old knowledge conserved by a select few, the custodians, who, in the beginning, are forced to isolate themselves completely because of the hostility displayed by the barbarians. Through habit, this isolation becomes permanent, even when it is no longer necessary. And with the sole exception of Artullos, who has been expelled from the laboratory fortress by his fellows, none of the custodians try to help the benighted people about them. In the end, through human passion, prejudice, misunderstanding, the custodians perish with all their lore, and the Knight of the Dark Age is complete. The reader will note certain ironic ifs and might have bins in the tale. Other points that I have stressed are the immense, well-nigh insufferable difficulties met by Ortullos in his attempt to reconstruct amid primitive conditions. A few of the lost inventions for the benefit of the site of the savages, and the total frustration of Torquayane's studies and experiments through mere inability to read the books left by his dead father. Also, I've shown how a chemical such as gunpowder might be used by one who had learned its effects, but was wholly ignorant of its origin and nature. And there we go. Nice. I think that basically just tallies up with a lot of our observations, really, about the story and uh basically what he was trying to say. I think we'd we pretty much nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

Yeah, it it it hits all the points that he was trying to get across, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is this, um, like I say, get rid of all this science, let's go back to natural living until you you know you get a toothache or you break your toe, or you where's those painkillers? Yeah, but that's it, isn't it? I need some penicillin.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:24

Which herbs do you mix to do this?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yes, and well, that interesting thing as well of our generation onwards pretty much wouldn't have a clue. You know, the previous generation they could work the land. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't know one end of a plough from another, and you know, but where do you plug it in? Sort of thing, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:48

You know, it's sad, isn't it? There's a lot of skills that I think have been lost, and they've and more and more are getting lost every day, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

Well, even just I think the the most sinister thing with technology, obviously, there's the whole AI thing, it's just that separation of people from each other through these mediums that are supposed to connect us, uh, social media and phones and all the rest, but they seem to make people more isolated more often than not.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

Yeah. Interestingly, I was talking to the about this to somebody at the Elizabeth Literary Festival, how weird it is when you go to an event like that and people you've been talking to for years online, you don't recognize them to begin with. You're like, Who are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:33

Because you've never seen their face, you've seen an avatar or something, right? So or people people go under a name of you know Slinky Panther 459. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:43

Oh, I don't know what sites you've been on, mate.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:47

Slinkypanther.com. If you're ever feline curious, there you go. That's the tagline.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

Oh, he's just he's just made an app for NECO relationships, hasn't he? Yeah, for cat boys and cat girls.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:11

There we go. We've got some filth in at the end. We can crowbar it in anywhere. Absolutely. Uh on that note, on that note, so yeah, not the strongest start to this uh volume. Having said that, there's some real treats lined up, uh, including next time, The Death of Maligrease, which is one of the finest stories, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:36

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, this collection has actually has some of my favorite Smith stories in it. I mean, yeah, Coming of the White Worm is one of my favorites, that's and that's coming up, and uh Seven Gaiuses and all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:52

The Black App of Perth. Oh, that's a nice one.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

There's some bangers in this collection, there really is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:59

And um, if you haven't heard it already and you want to get a bit of a preview of what we're going to be talking about next time, I did put up my reading of the Death of Malagris a few weeks ago. That's up on the uh on the channel, which was a lot of fun to do because uh again, you start reading it, you say, Oh, this is not too bad, and then suddenly you get one of those paragraphs that requires uh more than a couple of takes.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:28

I've gotta say, Lovecraft's worse. I mean, reading the festival I did for one Christmas as a bonus episode. My god, that how we how are you supposed to read read that out loud? There's nowhere to breathe.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

Yeah, yeah. Those sometimes, you know, suck a third of a page is one sentence, isn't it? Pretty much. Yeah, yeah. What I found with the reading, I was generally okay on the pronunciations because some you can just like uh maranapion could be maranapion, could be ma anapion. You know, you can make your own one as long as you're consistent. The the thing I struggle with most is consistent voices because you you're not putting on a voice as such, but you want to distinguish the characters, yes, and then it's remembering three pages later, oh, what was the voice for that? Was he talking like this, or was he talking like this? Yeah, it's it's keeping track of that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Yeah, I know that one. I know that one. I've I've tripped myself up by doing a voice that's kind of low and husky, and then when I get halfway through the story, my voice is knackered.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

Didn't you do your vocal warm-ups?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:39

I thought, well, and you're not gargling with uh gargling port, that was the the one that I always used to do when I was in the Pirate Act. And do you know why I used to gargle port? Well, because John Tams told me to, you know, he who sung the Sharp theme, the old folk musician, Over the Hills and Far Away. Wow, right, right. Met him at Sidmouth folk festival. We were way down on the bill, and he was one of the headliners. And I was talking to him in the bar, and I was saying I was having trouble with my throat because I'd knacked it, and he was like, Oh, gargle him port, because he's from my neck of the woods, he's a Cheshire lad. So I always oh half a bottle of port, have a good goggle with it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:22

All right, totally smashed when you go on. Yeah, exactly. You're supposed to spit it out. Yeah, don't think he did, to be fair. Nice, I like it, I like it. So that's coming up next. We'd just like to say a big thanks again to everyone involved in ILF 26 for uh such a wonderful time. Looking forward to an even bigger and better event next year. Uh, we'd also like to welcome a new patron, Paula Dufort, has joined our merry throng. Welcome, Paula. Thanks for signing up. If you would also like to support the show and join our increasing band of patrons, check out the Patreon site. Of course, when you sign up, you get access to bonus content for Strange Shadows and the Innsmouth Book Club. You get your quarterly copy of Innsmouth News on PDF and you get free entry to the Innsmouth Literary Festival 27, which is going to be even longer. So worth even more. One would say longer, harder, and uncut. You might actually, I probably would as well, to be fair. Yeah, yeah. And oh, I just like to mention as well, because you can subscribe on the bus sprout site, but it's better if you subscribe on Patreon because it's much easier to get all those things out to you there. Obviously, we can't post IBC content on the Strange Shadows Bus Sprout, and vice versa, but they'll always be up available on the Patreon site. So if you are good enough to support the show, please do it via the Patreon site. So thanks very much for joining us again today for the start of this new possibly the last season in this form, anyway. And on that bombshell, it's goodbye from me, Rob Poyton.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

And it's bye for me, Tim Mendys.