Author Topic: Pseudopod 474: Mr. Hill’s Death  (Read 5022 times)

Bdoomed

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on: January 22, 2016, 08:24:58 PM
Pseudopod 474: Mr. Hill’s Death

by S.L. Gilbow

Mr. Hill’s Death” was first published in The Dark Magazine and was reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2015. “The English assignment in the story is based on a project I used to give when I was teaching high school. The idea for the short story came to me when a student showed a video of a car wreck to illustrate the word ‘tragic.'”

A 2011 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop, S.L. GILBOW‘s short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, The Dark Magazine, Betwixt and many other publications. Gilbow is a retired lieutenant colonel and navigator with twenty-six years of Air Force service and over 2000 flying hours in the B-52. He currently teaches English at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia. You can learn learn more about S. L. Gilbow at slgibow.com.

Your narrator – Mat Weller – well, you may heard of him if you keep your ears open.



Mr. Hill’s death is posted on YouTube. You can’t actually see him. Just the back of his sunflower yellow convertible, top up, cruising along a two lane road. The fifty-second clip, taken from a dash cam in a following car, seems rather ordinary at first, and you might think you were watching a typical drive through a wooded countryside. That is if the clip weren’t titled “Tragic Car Wreck.”




Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

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


ChrisK

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Reply #1 on: January 25, 2016, 06:17:19 PM
I recall this story fondly from when it appeared in The Dark, and enjoyed Matt Weller's smooth reading.

After reading several implausible stories about "viral videos", I appreciate the great effect You Tube is used to here.   



BoojumsRCool

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Reply #2 on: January 25, 2016, 11:21:31 PM
OK, first off, thank you for the story. I began the story on my ride home form work hoping to relax and clear my head from a rather tedious day, this episode was the next in queue. I didn't even really think too much about it and just let it play as I drove. Sounds relaxing, right? Fast forward to fifteen or so minutes later and I am clutching the wheel, shoulders tense and the volume on the stereo turned down listening uncomfortably. I knew what was going to happen and wonderfully, it did.

Boojums ARE cool!


Unblinking

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Reply #3 on: January 27, 2016, 04:24:46 PM
Well done. 

I saw most everything coming, but I like that that was a feature rather than a bug in this case.  The structuring of the story around a discussion of tragedy in literature was an especially interesting device, especially in regards to "tragedy" and "comedy" in a Shakespearian play meaning something very different from how the words are used in common vernacular today.  In particular I like how, after his death, it mentions that if Mr. Hill had been there to argue he would've argued that his own death was not a tragedy, because of course he would continue his education of his students on concepts on literature, even whilst dead.

I'm glad the story explicitly worked with MacBeth, because that is the primary tragedy I think of when I think of a tragedy based around obsession.

I also like that in this particular case Mr. Hill goes into his own tragedy with eyes open.  He chooses the tragic ending because to choose otherwise would be worse.  No one in the story knows he's a hero, but he's a damned hero, and the reason this story IS a proper tragedy, even in the literature sense, is that he has proven himself noble through his actions, even if he is not of noble birth in the classical sense.  He saw a way to save a life that no one else would believe, that no one else will thank him for, that no one in his own narrative will consider him a hero for, and he said "dammit, I'm going to do it anyway, because it would be wrong not to." 


The only small quibble I have is that, since he knew the exact date of his death, and the manner, it seems like he could've avoided it by just staying home, or having the car crushed into a cube at a wrecker, or just simply not driving faster.  But I think that's beside the point.  Perhaps this series of events could only have ever happened with someone who would choose to take this ending for himself.  Or perhaps his avoidance of the day would've just caused an even more unlikely series of events to occur, someone else driving a similar car on the same road, and so maybe by driving faster then he saved a stranger's life at that point.




matweller

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Reply #4 on: January 28, 2016, 03:06:56 PM
...Or perhaps his avoidance of the day would've just caused an even more unlikely series of events to occur, someone else driving a similar car on the same road, and so maybe by driving faster then he saved a stranger's life at that point...
I consider this my default position. The Final Destination rule, as it were.  ;)



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Reply #5 on: January 28, 2016, 06:01:48 PM
...Or perhaps his avoidance of the day would've just caused an even more unlikely series of events to occur, someone else driving a similar car on the same road, and so maybe by driving faster then he saved a stranger's life at that point...
I consider this my default position. The Final Destination rule, as it were.  ;)

:) 

Final Destination was very person-specific, while this is targeted at a make/model of car, so there's a lot more wiggle room regarding the choice of victim (though conversely much less wiggle room in the cause of death), but I hear ya.



South of No North

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Reply #6 on: January 29, 2016, 05:00:13 AM

[/quote]

The only small quibble I have is that, since he knew the exact date of his death, and the manner, it seems like he could've avoided it


[/quote]

I think the MC knew the date of the video's download on YouTube but not the day of the event, only that the event took place prior to the download, assuming the arrow of time was still applicable with Death Warning Videos.

This story had a nice quiet creepiness to it.
I enjoyed that he didn't try to find a why or how but simply accepted the inevitably of the tragedy, (in the YouTube posters use of the word). Also how the student he saved wasn't a favorite of his or some kind of prodigy, just a normal girl who even texted through his class.

Where I listen to the podcast doesn't have an easy rewind so...
What was the name of the site that had the audacity to scare the bejesus out of Alasdair?

"Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise...and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe." --The Chymist by Thomas Ligotti


JohnCombo

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Reply #7 on: February 01, 2016, 06:05:59 PM
I love how this story is "Groundhogs Day" the scary version. I mean, the file creation date is February 2.



Unblinking

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Reply #8 on: February 01, 2016, 08:21:47 PM
I love how this story is "Groundhogs Day" the scary version. I mean, the file creation date is February 2.

Ha, that did cross my mind. :)



Fenrix

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Reply #9 on: February 01, 2016, 08:27:49 PM
I love how this story is "Groundhogs Day" the scary version. I mean, the file creation date is February 2.

Ha, that did cross my mind. :)

I hope none of you drive a yellow convertible.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Moritz

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Reply #10 on: February 13, 2016, 08:55:57 AM
I also really liked this story.



eytanz

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Reply #11 on: February 22, 2016, 09:31:09 PM
I thought this was a great story. I had a very different take to Alasdair, though - for me, this is a story about how Mr. Hill managed to cheat his tragic death by transforming it into a heroic death (in the modern, rather than classical, sense). It's true no one else knows it, but that's not important - what is important is that he chose to sacrifice himself for the life of another.

It reminded me a bit of the underrated Will Ferrell/Emma Thomspson movie "Stranger than Fiction", where the main character learns the ending to his story but chooses to go ahead with it willingly because he knows that otherwise, someone else will suffer. This story just doesn't have the happy twist in the end.



dagny

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Reply #12 on: February 22, 2016, 10:30:38 PM
It reminded me a bit of the underrated Will Ferrell/Emma Thomspson movie "Stranger than Fiction", where the main character learns the ending to his story but chooses to go ahead with it willingly because he knows that otherwise, someone else will suffer. This story just doesn't have the happy twist in the end.

I'm so happy you mentioned this film. I thought I was the only one who liked it.

I agree with you about Mr. Hill. His fate is tragic because it's inevitable; he's a tragic hero because he embraces it instead of allowing someone else to suffer for him.

"Wolfman's got nards!"


eytanz

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Reply #13 on: February 22, 2016, 10:58:58 PM
It's not inevitable, exactly - he could have survived simply by not doing anything and letting his student die in the car. This is squabbling about the semantics of literary terminology, but he died not because of his personality flaws, which is the mark of a tragic hero, but he went to his fate despite them, which is the mark of a triumphant hero.



Not-a-Robot

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Reply #14 on: February 23, 2016, 02:51:31 PM
It reminded me a bit of the underrated Will Ferrell/Emma Thomspson movie "Stranger than Fiction", where the main character learns the ending to his story but chooses to go ahead with it willingly because he knows that otherwise, someone else will suffer. This story just doesn't have the happy twist in the end.

I'm so happy you mentioned this film. I thought I was the only one who liked it.

I agree with you about Mr. Hill. His fate is tragic because it's inevitable; he's a tragic hero because he embraces it instead of allowing someone else to suffer for him.

Or the ending to A Tale of Two Cities. It's one of those sad/happy endings going to your fate endings, just without a spec element.

I liked this one.  I think that it was funny that there was a discussion about creepy pasta on the forums (which I had never heard of before).  And then a story having to do with internet horror pops up.



dagny

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Reply #15 on: February 24, 2016, 01:46:31 PM
It's not inevitable, exactly - he could have survived simply by not doing anything and letting his student die in the car. This is squabbling about the semantics of literary terminology, but he died not because of his personality flaws, which is the mark of a tragic hero, but he went to his fate despite them, which is the mark of a triumphant hero.

Maybe. I kind of think that Mr. Hill's nobility comes from a place of superiority, though--which would make him a tragic hero. :) He does muse an awful lot about the nature of tragedy.

"Wolfman's got nards!"