Author Topic: Pseudopod 500: A Bit Of The Dark World  (Read 4327 times)

Bdoomed

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on: July 24, 2016, 09:49:09 PM
Pseudopod 500: A Bit Of The Dark World



by Fritz Leiber.

“A Bit Of The Dark World” originally appeared in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, February 1962. It is presented here as the 7th part of our 10 episode “A CENTURY OF HORROR” celebration – with 9 other episodes made available only to subscribers!

FRITZ REUTER LEIBER JR. (1910-1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having in fact created the term. Leiber was heavily influenced by H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Graves in the first two decades of his career. Beginning in the late 1950s, he was increasingly influenced by the works of Carl Jung, particularly by the concepts of the anima and the shadow. From the mid-1960s onwards, he began incorporating elements of Joseph Campbell’s THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES into his work.

Your Reader – Norm Sherman – did a heroic reading job for this extra-long story! Give him a hand!



“… and then one of the last rays of the sun must have struck a mirror-surface in the summit-crag, perhaps an outcropping of quartz, for it struck back at me like a golden rapier, making me blink, and then for an instant the beam was glitteringly black and I thought I saw (though nothing as clearly as I’d seen the black all-knowing spider-centipede on the pinnacle) a black shape — black with the queer churning blackness you see only at night with your eyes dosed. The shape coiled rapidly down the crag, into the cavern gullies and around the rocks and finally and utterly into the undergrowth above the fold and disappeared.”




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?


Bdoomed

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Reply #1 on: July 24, 2016, 09:50:30 PM
500 already?  They grow up so fast.

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


adrianh

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Reply #2 on: July 25, 2016, 07:58:36 PM
<general round of applause for all the things>



Not-a-Robot

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Reply #3 on: July 30, 2016, 08:09:59 PM
Congrats guys! Great reading. I saw the picture of Fritz Lieber above and thought, You would write a story like this, wouldn't you.



Scuba Man

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Reply #4 on: August 03, 2016, 02:41:43 AM
Whew, this was a wordy, wordy podcast. Norm, great reading, eh.

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Sgarre1

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Reply #5 on: August 03, 2016, 02:48:31 PM
Yes - the length was outside of our usual comfort zone but then what better excuse than 500? I imagine people are still chewing it over during their last three commutes...



Unblinking

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Reply #6 on: August 12, 2016, 04:23:15 PM
Because of the length I did find my attention wandering a bit from time to time, but overall I quite enjoyed this one--started by posing the question of how anything supernatural could possibly be scary in this day and age anymore, and then answering it.  I especially liked the alternate descriptions of the thing on the peak that all had similar shape to them but all different directions from it. 

Good piece of cosmic horror, I think.



davidthygod

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Reply #7 on: August 31, 2016, 02:46:58 PM
The part of this story that stood out for me was Alistair's retelling of personal struggles at the end.  Wow!!  I kept wondering what backroom Escape Artists dramas may be going on or his stories could be unrelated (but it didn't feel that way).  I feel out of touch.  Hope all is better Alistair.  Make the hard decisions as quickly as possible.  Rip off the bandaid and move on with assurance that you made the best decisions possible with the information you had at the time, and then don't second guess yourself.  Make the decisions the right decision by moving forward with leadership and determination.

The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.


Fenrix

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Reply #8 on: September 29, 2016, 03:39:50 AM
Did anyone else hear this as a Good parts version of House on the Borderlands, or was that just me?

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


cwthree

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Reply #9 on: September 30, 2016, 03:12:07 PM
I want to enjoy this one. I really do, but I'm halfway through and I just can't get into it. I think it's the long near-soloquies of the two male protagonists that have done it for me. It's not their content - that's all necessary and relevant to the story - but the fact that they simply don't hold up well when read aloud. I suspect I'd enjoy this story more in print, and I intend to seek it out.