Escape Artists

PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on June 14, 2021, 06:35:05 AM

Title: PseudoPod 761: The Black Stone Statue
Post by: Bdoomed on June 14, 2021, 06:35:05 AM
PseudoPod 761: The Black Stone Statue (https://pseudopod.org/2021/06/11/pseudopod-761-the-black-stone-statue/)

Author: Mary Elizabeth Counselman (https://pseudopod.org/people/mary-elizabeth-counselman/)
Narrator: George Cleveland (https://pseudopod.org/people/george-cleveland/)
Host: Scott Campbell (https://pseudopod.org/people/scott-campbell/)
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett (https://pseudopod.org/people/marty-perrett/)

“The Black Stone Statue” was first published in Weird Tales, December 1937



Show Notes
We can’t help but wonder what Counselman would think of Annihilation.



Directors,
Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Mass.

Gentlemen:

Today I have just received aboard the S. S. Madrigal your most kind cable, praising my work and asking—humbly, as one might ask it of a true genius!—if I would do a statue of myself to be placed among the great in your illustrious museum. Ah, gentlemen, that cablegram was to me the last turn of the screw!

I despise myself for what I have done in the name of art. Greed for money and acclaim, weariness with poverty and the contempt of my inferiors, hatred for a world that refused to see any merit in my work: these things have driven me to commit a series of strange and terrible crimes.

In these days I have thought often of suicide as a way out—a coward’s way, leaving me the fame I do not deserve. But since receiving your cablegram, lauding me for what I am not and never could be, I am determined to write this letter for the world to read. It will explain everything. And having written it, I shall then atone for my sin in  a horribly ironic manner but  one that is most fitting.




Listen to this week's PseudoPod. (https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/pseudopod/Pseudo761_TheBlackStoneStatue.mp3)
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Title: Re: PseudoPod 761: The Black Stone Statue
Post by: Scattercat on June 20, 2021, 04:47:28 AM
Ah, the days when you could just make up complete gibberish and call it science fiction.  XD

I like the old monster stories.  This one reminded me a little of one called IIRC "The Violet Death," that's "violet" and not "violent," because it was a magical series of syllables/sounds that when chanted aloud would cause you to turn into a conical purple Jell-O mold.  No, literally.  And you had to cover your ears while you screamed it or you'd turn into gelatin too. 

Old-time horror fiction was deeply weird sometimes.

I do want some indestructible bridges, though, for serious.  What an a-hole, dropping that into the ocean.  How does he know it won't count the ocean as "one object," either?  :-P