PseudoPod 696: The Fog

[Bdoomed]

PseudoPod 696: The Fog

Author: Morley Roberts
Narrator: Ant Bacon
Host: Graeme Dunlop
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett

“The Fog” first appeared in The Strand Magazine in October 1908 and was collected in MIDSUMMER MADNESS in 1909.


The fog had been thickening for many weeks, but now, moving like a black wall, it fell on the town. The lights that guided the world were put out—the nearest were almost as invisible as the stars; a powerful arc-lamp overhead was but a blur. Traffic ceased, for drivers could not see; screams were heard in the streets, and cries for help, where none could help themselves.

“I’m blind,” said Tom Crabb, as he leant against the pillar outside the Café Français in Regent Street. He said it with a chuckle, for he, alone of a street full of the lost, did not feel lost. “I’m blind, but know my way home!”

Day by day and night by night he patrolled the street with a placard upon his breast marked in big letters, “Blind’. People with eyes saw him. Out of a thousand one gave him a penny; out of ten thousand one gave him sixpence. The millionth, or some charitable madman, made it half a crown. The red-letter day of his blind life was when he found a sovereign in his palm, put there by a soft little hand that touched his. He heard a gentle girl’s voice say, “Poor blind man.” He had a hard life, and was a hard and lonely man, but he remembered that voice, as he did all voices.


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[Scuba Man]

It was a slow, Victorian (?!) burn with a pre-WW1 vibe. I liked it. May we never have to deal with such a deadly thermal inversion here in Toronto. Yikes.

[JDuckworth]

I've always enjoyed disaster stories where the disaster is left unexplained. It makes it feel all the more terrifying and makes the situation more helpless. But I also think there's a good balance (which this piece strikes) between "really really bad" and "hopeless." When a situation is so hopeless that survival becomes impossible, it's not as compelling, but the fog in this story at least gives the characters a chance.