Author Topic: Pseudopod 443: Watchers  (Read 3226 times)

Bdoomed

  • Pseudopod Tiger
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 5891
  • Mmm. Tiger.
on: June 19, 2015, 09:10:40 PM
Pseudopod 443: Watchers

by Lavie Tidhar

“Watchers” was originally published in World War Cthulhu, ed. Jonathan Oliver, publisher: Cubicle 7, 2013.  “Very little of this is made up. The coastwatchers on Leserser were there  as described – as was I, half a century later.”

Lavie Tidhar is the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award winning author of Osama, The Violent Century and many other novels, novellas and short fiction. His new novel, A Man Lies Dreaming, was published by Hodder in the UK in October. His comics mini-series ADLER came out from Titan Comics at the end of 2014.

The story is narrated by Robert Gonyo. Robert A. K. Gonyo is a theatre director, actor, voiceover artist, and musician residing in Queens, New York, and the producer and host of the “Go See a Show!” podcast, which you can find on iTunes. Horror fans in New York City can see him perform weekly in End Times Productions’ “The Ded Sullivan Show,” Saturday nights at Times Scare — visit robertgonyo.com for more information, and discounted tickets.




1.

The city is buried deep under the South Pacific ocean, and that is all I want to tell you about it.

In 1942 South Pacific Command was established on the island of New Caledonia following the hurried departure of its French colonial administration. Nouvelle Caledonie, unlike the other islands of Melanesia, was not volcanic. It was, in fact, the sole remnant of an entire sunken continent called Zealandia, a fragment of the once-mighty Gondwanaland.

There had been monsters on New Caledonia, before humans came. Meiolania, a giant horned turtle, two and a half meters long with an elongated skull and multiple horns protruding from of it. Or the Sylviornis, an almost two meters tall, flightless bird with a long reptilian tail. Or the enormous, armoured Mekosuchus crocodiles.

Real monsters, all of them. But when the humans came, when the ancient Lapita people crossed the ocean in their giant canoes, they settled the islands, and they killed the monsters.

I was not in New Caledonia. I was with III Island Command, first on Espiritu Santo and then on Vanua Lava, in the islands of the New Hebrides.




Sounds used in this episode:
Birds: http://www.xeno-canto.org/113088

Waves: https://www.freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/191296/


Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2015, 03:18:05 PM by Bdoomed »

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #1 on: June 22, 2015, 02:01:51 PM
This felt real.  It's a horror story about that monstrosity too big for anyone to understand, that is too timeless and massive to have any grasp of individual human beings and which stirs from fitful sleep to put humanity through the thresher with its indifferent malice... and also about Cthulhu.  I can see how Cthulhu ties in naturally to something like WWII.

A lot of the telling of the story was too distant for my tastes, not really sure why since the events were very personal, just something about the choice of language.



TrishEM

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 208
Reply #2 on: June 29, 2015, 03:56:23 AM
I'm still hearing that moaning song from time to time. The story felt very immersive, like time was stretching and distorting as the watchers waited and I listened. For a second, when the pilot looked bemused at the question of whether they were winning the war, I was wondering whether actually the war had ended years and years ago, and these men were just left stranded in time, but no, I suppose that really the war was becoming so immense and eternal, partly through its stirring the resonances of the ancient old war, that the idea of winning or losing had lost its meaning.



Wiggins

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 7
Reply #3 on: June 30, 2015, 02:15:17 PM
No more Cthulhu fanfic, please.  This had potential to be a great and effective story but was undermined by the tired backdrop.  :(



headintheclouds

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 5
Reply #4 on: June 30, 2015, 08:44:22 PM
The story wasn't bad, but definitely not my favorite. I just am not a fan of war stories. War is horror by itself, no matter who wins.