Author Topic: PseudoPod 659: Lord Beden’s Motor  (Read 2170 times)

Bdoomed

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on: August 02, 2019, 08:33:31 PM
PseudoPod 659: Lord Beden’s Motor

Author: J.B. Harris-Burland
Narrator: Matt Dovey
Host: Alex Hofelich

“Lord Beden’s Motor” first appeared in The Strand Magazine in December 1901.



Show Notes
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A hard man was Ralph Strang, seventh Earl of Beden, seventy years of age on his last birthday, but still upright as a dart, with hair white as snow, but with the devilry of youth still sparkling in his keen dark eyes. He was, indeed, able to follow the hounds with the best of us, and there were few men, even among the youngest and most hot-headed of our riders, who cared to follow him over all the jumps he put his horse at.

When I first came to Upstanway as a doctor I thought it strange that so good a sportsman should be so unpopular. As a rule a man can do pretty well anything in a sporting county so long as he rides straight to hounds. But before I had been in the place a month I attended him after a fall in the hunting-field, and I saw that a man like that would be unpopular even if he gave all his goods to the poor and lived the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Not that he was harsh or even unpleasant, but he had the knack of making one feel foolish and uncomfortable, and there was something in the expression of his eyes that made one unable to look him squarely in the face. His manners, indeed, were perfect, and he retained all the old-world courtliness which seems to have been permanently abandoned by this generation, but I could not help feeling that underneath all his politeness and even hospitality lay a solid substratum of contempt.




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Scuba Man

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Reply #1 on: August 11, 2019, 12:54:58 PM
This was some Victorian, somewhat steampunk prose. I'm not a racing-car fan (I prefer my motor-carriages to lumber along, belching water vapour, and possessing a low-carbon-footprint). Now if this story had an engine running on 100% methanol/ethanol and had complete combustion {fuel + oxygen yields carbon dioxide + water vapour + energy)... THEN I'd be all excited...  8)

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Scattercat

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Reply #2 on: August 26, 2019, 05:36:16 AM
One does wonder why he didn't just let his brother finish his cool steampunk supercar.  Like at least get the magic technology done and THEN kill him and steal it.  ;-)



TrishEM

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Reply #3 on: November 22, 2019, 04:31:30 AM
One does wonder why he didn't just let his brother finish his cool steampunk supercar.  Like at least get the magic technology done and THEN kill him and steal it.  ;-)

I think he just hated his brother and didn't want him to have the satisfaction of completing his project. Plus, if the brother had managed to actually accomplish his lifelong dream, he might have been able to pull himself together and regain his place despite what I assume was his lifetime of being undermined and gaslighted (gaslit?) by Ralph.