Escape Artists

PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Talia on August 07, 2013, 12:40:17 PM

Title: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Talia on August 07, 2013, 12:40:17 PM
PodCastle 272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life (http://podcastle.org/2013/08/06/podcastle-272-the-tree-of-life/)

by C.L. Moore

Read by Dave Robison, of the Roundtable Podcast (http://www.roundtablepodcast.com/).

Originally appeared in Weird Tales, October 1936.

Over time-ruined Illar the searching planes swooped and circled. Northwest Smith, peering up at them with a steel-pale stare from the shelter of a half-collapsed temple, thought of vultures wheeling above carrion. All day long now they had been raking these ruins for him. Presently, he knew, thirst would begin to parch his throat and hunger to gnaw at him. There was neither food nor water in these ancient Martian ruins, and he knew that it could be only a matter of time before the urgencies of his own body would drive him out to signal those wheeling Patrol ships and trade his hard-won liberty for food and drink. He crouched lower under the shadow of the temple arch and cursed the accuracy of the Patrol gunner whose flame-blast had caught his dodging ship just at the edge of Illar’s ruins.

Presently it occurred to him that in most Martian temples of the ancient days an ornamental well had stood in the outer court for the benefit of wayfarers. Of course all water in it would be a million years dry now, but for lack of anything better to do he rose from his seat at the edge of the collapsed central dome and made his cautious way by still intact corridors toward the front of the temple. He paused in a tangle of wreckage at the courtyard’s edge and looked out across the sun-drenched expanse of pavement toward that ornate well that once had served travelers who passed by here in the days when Mars was a green planet.

It was an unusually elaborate well, and amazingly well preserved. Its rim had been inlaid with a mosaic pattern whose symbolism must once have borne deep meaning, and above it in a great fan of time-defying bronze an elaborate grille-work portrayed the inevitable tree-of-life pattern which so often appears in the symbolism of the three worlds. Smith looked at it a bit incredulously from his shelter, it was so miraculously preserved amidst all this chaos of broken stone, casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the sunny pavement as perfectly as it must have done a million years ago when dusty travelers paused here to drink. He could picture them filing in at noontime through the great gates that——

The vision vanished abruptly as his questing eyes made the circle of the ruined walls. There had been no gate. He could not find a trace of it anywhere around the outer wall of the court. The only entrance here, as nearly as he could tell from the foundations that remained, had been the door in whose ruins he now stood. Queer. This must have been a private court, then, its great grille-crowned well reserved for the use of the priests. Or wait—had there not been a priest-king Illar after whom the city was named? A wizard-king, so legend said, who ruled temple as well as palace with an iron hand. This elaborately patterned well, of material royal enough to withstand the weight of ages, might well have been sacrosanct for the use of that long-dead monarch. It might——


Rated PG.

(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PC272_TheTreeOfLife.mp3)
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Vanamonde on August 07, 2013, 03:25:00 PM
The 'Protecting Project Pulp' podcast covered this story in episodes 22 and 23.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: DKT on August 07, 2013, 04:19:24 PM
They did. We did it in one episode, and I like our reading better :)

I'm not sure how much of a cross-over our audience has with Protecting Project Pulp (obviously some!) but I'm happy for this classic story to have as big of an audience as it can get.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Moritz on August 07, 2013, 05:52:22 PM
10 seconds? I never really counted while listening though.

I love space fantasy and space opera, as it gives new twists to the classic faux-medieval settings of fantasy, so I'm quite happy about this month's theme. I actually have the collected stories of Moore's Northwest Smith series but never had the chance to read them, so this was a nice introduction. It's always good to know your roots, even if those roots are a bit... dated. The language of 1930s pulp writing is just so long winded for modern day senses... 
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: DKT on August 07, 2013, 06:12:16 PM
Oh, for the contest you're not supposed to count the seconds. You just make a guess prior to listening to the story :)
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Moritz on August 07, 2013, 08:27:38 PM
Oh, for the contest you're not supposed to count the seconds. You just make a guess prior to listening to the story :)

That's exactly what I did. I just meant that after making the guess I didn't check...
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: DKT on August 07, 2013, 08:36:27 PM
Ah, cool :) That's kind of what I suspected, but wasn't sure.

For those just catching up, a certain adjective is used a lot in this story, and so Peter suggested we make a game out of it, allowing users to guess the shortest time span between the usages of "queer", you win some kind of prize - at least an honorary title, possibly something more labor intensive. But you have to make your guess before you listen to the 77 minute narration :)

Play/comment on!
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Father Beast on August 08, 2013, 12:37:58 AM
I had a guess of seven seconds. I was counting on someone saying, "Queer..... Very queer.

But seriously, I know that some words have changed meaning over the years, but because you warned us about "Queer", I was blinded to learn that the Foozle's name was Fag!
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Father Beast on August 08, 2013, 12:45:40 AM
On to the story....

I found that this had a very similar feel to "The Phoenix On The Sword". Did they have the same narrator?
<checking>
Ok, different reader. Still, it sounded quite similar. I guess the reader does make a difference. Some people have suggested that Audible should have a version of "Fifty Shades Of Grey" read by Gilbert Gottfried. :)

Anyway, having been primed by the Foozle's name, and the initial overly sensual description of the first time the tree touches someone, I was sensitized to the pornographic type language used in the mass sacrifice seen, and made me see it as a mass rape. I was disturbed, and not in a good way.

After that, I suppose there was no chance of me enjoying the rest of the story. Sorry.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Liminal on August 08, 2013, 03:08:17 AM
I was blinded to learn that the Foozle's name was Fag!

It was "Thag", not "fag".
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Mouseneb on August 08, 2013, 03:49:58 AM
My guess is 45 seconds :D Back to listening!
Title: Re: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: fractaloon on August 08, 2013, 04:21:00 PM
I gueess 7.3 seconds. The intro sure did a great job of making this story sound fun. I'm looking forward to diving in.  Here I go...
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Kaa on August 09, 2013, 02:37:02 AM
The queer, tapestried, blurry brightness of the terrible, mad, whispering trunk seemed somehow a terror; a fabulous danger as the luminous, deadly priestess hid within the twilight branches of horror.

So...yeah. The word 'tapestried' leapt out at me (a lot) and I had to come home, find the text, and just do a word distribution of it. :)

It was well-read, and quite fun to hear a story I'd never heard of before by an author I'd never heard of before. The style in vogue back then is so florid and purple by today's standards, I had a hard time taking it seriously, especially when it started the Lovecraftian part at the end. Where it was an indescribable terror so horrible and indescribable, that he could scarcely describe the indescribable, horrible terror...

I was unsurprised to hear the word 'gibbering' make a welcome appearance, but disappointed when 'non-Euclidian' did not join it.

Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Lionman on August 09, 2013, 03:10:55 AM
I still have like 7 minutes left to listen to, but it's the epilog of the tale, I suspect.

Was it just me, or did anyone get the feeling like this was written to feel more like a bodice ripper, penny dreadful?  While I know it was written three quarters of a century ago, the choice of words and structure of their use gives me the feeling of being a bit older, say the late 1800's, but so much more forward thinking than that age.

This was penned in the same decade as War of the Worlds, Dr. Seuss...we hadn't even discovered Pluto when this story was written.  So, in the modern thought and literature, it feels mismatched to what I might expect to hear the from the writing.  As a result, it made me feel like I actually had to listen, give thought to, and translate in my brain, just what was being read.  There was much more exercising of the listener in this story.

What I would like to see, is a modern telling of the same story.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: flintknapper on August 09, 2013, 06:41:36 PM
I tend to like more modern fiction and to like smaller audio pieces. So I had a lot of caution going into this one and to be honest, it was what I expected. It wasn't a bad tale it just didnt really speak to me. The dated writing style and language really distanced me from the piece.

I like what Lionman said in that it would really fascinating to listen or read a modern retelling of the same story.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: evrgrn_monster on August 10, 2013, 05:20:42 AM
I personally loved this story. Granted, I am a biased when it comes to A) older stories, B) giant episodes, and C) science fantasy, so I was pretty much doomed to like it. I agree, I got a definite Conan feel from this one, but I love me some sword and sorcery, so that was by no means a bad thing. Actually, I felt like this was a nice mix of Hyperion, Conan, and Lovecraft; masterfully crafted, a tad wordy (this is from the era of paid by the word prose, I believe) and steeped in legend and mythology.

Getting all the comparisons out of the way, I think this was a great choice to launch us into the month of science fantasy. I feel like with pieces like this, it is necessary to really let go of modern cynicism and just get lost in the world that's being described. Is it a bit overly flowery by today's standards? Sure. For my part, I think it's actually a bit refreshing to have a place completely described, from the way the blade of grass bends to the sound tiny men make when fearing for the life of a stranger. I wouldn't want it all the time, by any means, but sometimes it's nice to just have everything out on the table in full detail. Purple prose doesn't have to be a dirty phrase.

I was also a fan of the ending. He's been through this terrible near death experience, but you have no idea if he's even clear of the initial danger that made him literally jump feet first into that experience in the first place. Smart choice for the author, especially since she ended up making him a serial character. Leaves me wanting more, that's for sure. What happens next? Only the next adventure can tell!
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Cynandre on August 12, 2013, 04:41:21 AM
I've decided I will look into more of C.L. Moore's Work. H.P Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard's influences were indeed there.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: jk_jackel on August 13, 2013, 09:23:13 AM
Wow. This certainly travelled the genres. From the science fiction space patrols on Mars and force guns to the fantasy staples of magical glades, priestesses and enchanted trees all the way to the horror of all-consuming inter-dimensional beings.

I have to say though, what got me really hooked into the story was Smith. He struck me as some kind of turn of the century space faring Indiana Jones and the author leaves just enough hints at his character to intrigue... Who is chasing him? Why? And my favourite, what background of violence allows him to break free of Thagg.

Glad to hear there are more stories featuring him! I will be checking them out.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Devoted135 on August 17, 2013, 05:47:15 PM
Influenced by Howard and Lovecraft, indeed! :D

This was a ton of fun and a great way to kick off science fantasy month. Granted, I don't think I was meant to be laughing during the whole scene featuring Thagg, but... And I agree that I really liked Smith as a main character. To take another Harrison Ford example, this felt like throwing Han Solo into a Lovecraft story and seeing how he'd react. :)
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: InfiniteMonkey on August 23, 2013, 06:15:32 AM
To me it seemed more like what you'd get if you ran Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft together at high speed.

And while the story is enjoyable, I can tell this was paid by the word. It's just unnecessarily bloated in places.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Kaa on August 23, 2013, 12:53:43 PM
It's just unnecessarily bloated in places.

It's just egregiously and unnecessarily loaded with too many words and phrases that could be shortened to a single, simple adverb or adjective, or, perhaps, a better-chosen verb; bloated like the rotting corpse of some gibbering aquatic mammal that has washed up on the Stygian shore of some ancient, dark sea of unctuous, blood-warm waters, lapping desultorily at sands ground down from gargantuan rocks that existed since time immemorial, but which are slowly ground down over millennia to the fine particles which now litter its shadowed, non-Euclidian reaches.

(Fixed that for you. 91 words instead of 6! $CHA-CHING$!)
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: FireTurtle on September 07, 2013, 03:31:23 AM
I have to say, although I sort of phased in and out at times (driving to and from dog shelter looking at and eventually adopting a dog do not actually make for good listening skills in the car), I really enjoyed this one. I love verbiage. I love language that isn't concentrated and distilled into its most derivative form. I like to be immersed words. It's like a warm soothing bath instead of a quick shower. I just love it, I can't help it.

And in all honesty, I had a moment of adolescent hilarity when "queer" and "Thagg (sounds like Fag)" were occuring in rapid succession at one point. Yep, right there I knew this one was constructed in Olden Times. 

As for the plot itself, enjoyable. A little silly, and definitely more than a little undertone of bodice-ripping but engaging, especially with this Indiana Jones-esque space-faring dude in charge. If only he had used a whip instead of an energy pistol. Le sigh.

Thanks for resurrecting this one, you guys, it was awesome to examine the roots of modern spec-fic with this piece.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: lamonstera on September 10, 2013, 06:49:53 PM
I loved the language in this story. I smiled at the word "sward," a perfectly lovely term that one just about never hears these days.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: DKT on September 10, 2013, 06:59:07 PM
And while the story is enjoyable, I can tell this was paid by the word. It's just unnecessarily bloated in places.

To be fair, a lot of stories at Pro-Rate markets are still paid by the word  ;)  It's just a different cultural mindset than where we were when this story was originally published, I suspect. Now we want things to be as tight as possible - not a sentence wasted. In the days before all these at home luxuries like TV, internet, video games, maybe an enjoyable story that went on a little longer than absolutely necessary might be welcome? Kind of similar to most serialized television shows these days. (But I'm really just guessing.)
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Sgarre1 on September 10, 2013, 07:55:34 PM
Also, economic standards were different and you could just eke out an existence writing pay by the word stories (if you wrote enough of them, and people liked them) whereas nowadays there are almost no paying markets and what they pay, relative to the cost of living, is minimal.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Scattercat on September 14, 2013, 08:52:56 AM
Amen, Shawn.

Anyway, while I always enjoy a little bit of old-fashioned purple prose, this story left me really cold.  It managed to hit both the Damsel in Distress *and* the Wicked Temptress in the same character, and then the plot resolves itself in about the least satisfying way imaginable.  Hero is told about a giant evil horror.  For lack of anything more interesting to do, Hero encounters the horror, which is both giant and evil as well as horrible.  There is a brief interlude for us all to appreciate how terrifying and wrong it is when women have sex thoughts or wield power of any kind.  Then, despite being frozen due to horror at the horrible evil horror, Hero manages to shoot his popgun because having a penis makes him awesome somehow and no one ever thought to attack the evil before.  Everything explodes all out of proportion, possibly out of sheer awe at how big the hero's penis gun is. 

I mean, what, was Thagg the Demigod of the Balloon Animal Dimension?  Was he from a plane where everything is made of propane and pure oxygen?  It was like action movies from the sixties and seventies, where a single pistol bullet causes any given vehicle to instantly explode in flame.

Maybe it was supposed to be subversive or satirical somehow?  I dunno.  I missed it if it was.  When I heard that the author was a woman who'd fought her way to success in the days when SF was even more of a boy's club than it already is, I was really hoping for an old-timey story that didn't feature heaping gobs of racism or sexism in it.  We mostly missed the former, but jeez louise on the latter.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: quasidoza on October 02, 2013, 06:24:41 PM
This story is just my type of thing ... But didn't like it  ???

Not sure what it was, perhaps I wasn't in the mood but left completely indifferent.

I also thought it was Fag not Thag for 3/4 of the story and did dissolve into 12 year old giggles when the priestess was talking about him at first saying his name 84 times.

Oh well, maybe I'll connect with the next one.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: bizbrig on October 05, 2013, 02:25:58 AM
I really enjoyed this one. I let the authoritative narrator have command. And poof, I was there. The story of the author might have softened me up though.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Unblinking on October 17, 2013, 09:44:58 AM
I didn't really get a lot out of this.   Scattercat makes good points, as he often does, though i don't know that my reaction was as strong as his (as it often isn't).

Wordy classic stories in and of themselves don't bother me--it was the prevalent style of the day, that's cool.

The part that really bugged me is the ending where he is magically immune to Thagg's tortures in an inexplicable way that no one else who's encountered Thagg has ever before demonstrated.  Why is he so magically special?  This is the entire focal point of the story and it's just glossed over.
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Scattercat on October 17, 2013, 04:10:28 PM
though i don't know that my reaction was as strong as Scattercat's (as it often isn't).

I am a powerful man, with powerful moods.

/Conan
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: LaShawn on October 17, 2013, 07:47:35 PM
The part that really bugged me is the ending where he is magically immune to Thagg's tortures in an inexplicable way that no one else who's encountered Thagg has ever before demonstrated.  Why is he so magically special?  This is the entire focal point of the story and it's just glossed over.

I disagree. Smith was just as caught up in the music just as the denizens of the planet was. We just had Smith's POV to go on; I'm pretty sure the denizens were just as horrified as they were running to their doom. They also had that moment of clarity of their impending demise just before they got devoured/suckedintoanotherdimension/whatever. Smith just had the presence of mind to remember his little popgun.

And I don't care what rationale the story gave it. Smith goes up against a gigantic god straggling different dimensions and hey-presto, not only does he harm it, but he himself sustains no injuries whatsoever? Really? Which makes me wonder if it all had occurred or was it some oxygen deprived dream on his part.

I did find it interesting how he looked down at the denizens in a privileged, oh-look-at-the-dumb-noble-savages sort of way...but then when he's running from Thag, the same beastly descriptions suddenly applied to him.

I also found the description of the live Tree of Life* lovely despite the MC's revulsion, and the tree bending down to embrace the priestess surprisingly tender.

Overall, I couldn't take the story seriously, but it was still a good romp of a read. Like everyone else, I was bemused by the prolific use of 'queer' and 'throbbing' towards the end. The only problem I truly had was when the story threw out 'Unrealizingly'. I had to rewind that part over and over again just to make sure I heard it right. Unrealizingly. Is that even a word?!
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Fenrix on January 17, 2014, 01:25:30 AM
Thagg is freaking awesome. I loved everything about that monster. I'm glad its description wasn't modern, because if it was we would have gotten something akin to hentai. Clearly I need to read more Northwest Smith and this prototype of Han Solo. So I added "Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith" to my wish list. If only we had a way to listen to "Shambleau" which kicked the whole series off.

For those of you who liked this, I recommend checking out Clark Ashton Smith (also a contemporary and correspondent of Howard and Lovecraft). I think both The Flower Women (http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/spoken-word/47/the-flower-women) and The City of the Singing Flame (http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/spoken-word/40/the-city-of-the-singing-flame) hit similar vibes to different portions of the story. Also those links go to MP3's of solid narrations of the stories.

Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: Kerry_M on March 15, 2014, 10:07:42 PM
I did enjoy aspects of this tale, but what was up in the 1930s that had Lovecraft, Howard and this author so hung up with the whole "degenerate race" trope?
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: ChairmanDances on March 25, 2014, 03:22:20 AM
To be fair, a lot of stories at Pro-Rate markets are still paid by the word  ;)  It's just a different cultural mindset than where we were when this story was originally published, I suspect. Now we want things to be as tight as possible - not a sentence wasted. In the days before all these at home luxuries like TV, internet, video games, maybe an enjoyable story that went on a little longer than absolutely necessary might be welcome? Kind of similar to most serialized television shows these days. (But I'm really just guessing.)
Pulp authors were all paid by the word, so the more the better from their point of view.  Also think you're right about killing time.  There were a lot fewer entertainment options around at the time so you probably wanted whatever you had to last as log as possible.  You can see the difference in attitudes about baseball.  From the '30s through the '60s there weren't many complaints about the length of a game or a season.  in the last generation or to, many see it as too slow-paced and too long.  Fans going to a game today need more than what's going on on the field to keep them interested,
Title: Re: PC272, Giant Episode: The Tree of Life
Post by: ChairmanDances on March 25, 2014, 03:32:58 AM
I did enjoy aspects of this tale, but what was up in the 1930s that had Lovecraft, Howard and this author so hung up with the whole "degenerate race" trope?
Eugenics was the dark side of the American Progressive movement at the turn of the Century.  Many of the intellectual leaders of that movement believed in the scientific "improvement" of the race and were concerned about "undesirables" as evidenced by support for forced sterilization, etc. so I think it was just something in the zeitgeist of the time.  You can see this trope as far back as the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine but there may be earlier examples.