Episodes 108-110 - Challenge from Beyond (Live at the Travelling Man in Leeds!)

[old book]

Nothing's secret on the internet, Paul. I just used a search engine and a little ingeniuty to get the larger versions, meaning I clicked on the LARGE button somewhere. Hope I didn't step on any toes, but so many people missed the Yog cast I figured some of the podcraft forum members deserved a bone at least. Good thing I didn't record and post the entire live podcraft, since Sich and Chard plan to roll it out.

Not the "fezmonger," reposted:

[Eibon]

It was a nice evening. Great to meet everyone. It was a good choice of story.

To be fair to Abraham Merritt, he probably had other calls on his time and therefore devoted little effort to an unpaid small press fanzine story which he might expect a couple of hundred people ever to see.

As for the story, we all forgot to mention Richard Searight, who invented the Eltdown Shards. Searight had incorperated the Shards, with his own varient history of their origins, into two stories "The Warder of Knowledge" and "The Sealed Casket". He'd sent them to Lovecraft to comment on. Lovecraft liked the Mythos book and took it over, mentioning it in "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Diary of Alonso Typer", and most extensively "The Challenge From Beyond" chaning it's translator from Gordon Whitney to Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall. This means that any connection between the name "Eltdown" and "Piltdown" is Searight's, although Lovecraft would almost certainly have recognised the similarities in name. It's one of several examples where Lovecraft takes someone elses Mythos invention and runs with it.

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

Got a huge kick out of the story when I read it. Excited that the first part of the episode is up!

Good point about Shadow not having been published, because that's something I thought when I first read the story. Though I liked that he worked in the Yithians so at least it didn't seem like he was just duplicating. Maybe they evolved separately from the same source milennia ago.

The V'Ger reference made me think--if the worm guys are squashing developing planets, they're pretty much anti Prime Directive. To seek out new life and new civilizations! To boldly go where no worm-brain has gone before!!! ...and annihilate them.

[Bob Lovecraft]

The V'Ger reference made me think--if the worm guys are squashing developing planets, they're pretty much anti Prime Directive. To seek out new life and new civilizations! To boldly go where no worm-brain has gone before!!! ...and annihilate them.

Que theme music overlay.

Bob

[Eric Lofgren]

I love how the setting is Canada. There really isn't a lot of stories out there that are set here. But I will be looking a bit more critically at any quartz I find from now on

[Genus Unknown]

if the worm guys are squashing developing planets, they're pretty much anti Prime Directive. To seek out new life and new civilizations! To boldly go where no worm-brain has gone before!!! ...and annihilate them.

Would that be the Composite Directive then?

I love how the setting is Canada. There really isn't a lot of stories out there that are set here.

You've read "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood, right? Because if not, you should totally read "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood.

[Eric Lofgren]

Not yet. but I plan on getting to it.

[Genus Unknown]

Oh, it's lovely. I like it better than "The Willows," personally, whatever HPL might say. Not to give too much away, but the monster is pretty clearly a mythical personification of the Canadian wilderness itself.

[old book]

BBC or someone did something on the Wendigo/Wedygo (some funky alternate spelling, I forget what it was) recently. It was fairly interesting, but I came out of not knowing much more.

[Eric Lofgren]

I was listening to The Willows on audiobook recently and lost interest in it. I should finish it, but it just made me want to go back and listen to more Lovecraft    

[Genus Unknown]

That first big chunk of "The Willows," where Blackwood is in full travelogue mode about the Danube, is pretty dull. It picks up after our protagonists set up camp, and gets pretty bleedin' creepy by the end. I still like "The Wendigo" better though, if only because I've been in some spooky Canadian woods at night, but have never been menaced by willows on the Danube.

[old book]

I never got past the temporary islands and willows welling up along the Danube myself. I have enjoyed a number of adaptations of Wendigo, however, although I'm not sure I ever read it.

The setting of Challenge is sort of vague: in the Canadian woods, in August. Isn't Canada geographically the third- or fourth-largest country in the world?

I guess REH's Yekub and Tothe are Jacob and Thoth.

Didn't they say during the live podcraft there are two versions of this, and one is "Sci-Fi" and one is weird? Where's the missing text that's suposedly hard to find on the internet? Is it any better?

[Vulpine]

Really enjoyed the episode, laughed out loud a few times.  Looking forward to the REH section, as it such a different voice than HPL's. 

As for the Willows, I listened to an audio version a while back, and it is kind of slow...but the creep factor at the end made up for the travel channel bit.

[TransconaSlim]

Is it just me, or did the description of the cube fit perfectly with the depiction of the All Spark in the 2007 live-action Transformers movie?



Also, when it comes to 'worm people' I don't envision human-sized worms with worm clothes and worm cars and worm houses.  Rather, more in line with the idea of cosmicism, my idea of the worm planet is one filled with super-intelligent normal sized worms - and who knows, maybe the worms of earth are really the 'intelligent life' of this planet, and for all we know we are apes in there eyes.  

[Vulpine]

Is it just me, or did the description of the cube fit perfectly with the depiction of the All Spark in the 2007 live-action Transformers movie?



Looks more like something from Hellraiser to me.