Episode 114: In the Walls of Eryx (with Kenneth Sterling)

[Moon-lit Meadow-monster]

Graf, thank you for the additional perspectives. I'm not sure if HPL intended some greater non-man-lizard threat or not, but that was my initial impression. Either way, no good seems to come from exploring mysterious structures. Especially ones containing corpses and glowing crystals

[old book]

Saw this, thought someone else might like it, too:

[Inner Prop]

I like it, where's the LIKE button?

It is very Heavy Metal:

[Newton Applefig]

So, I read the story again, very closely a few times.  I won't go into it, but here is my revised and rather disappointed re-reading.

The story is sort of haphazard, even from the first paragraph, it seems like it never really pulls together well.  Stanfield starts off the thing sounding like he is typing up a report somewhere safe, when actually he is getting ready for his death.  He even touts the importance of the report because the situation is so "singular".  Well, no kidding.

I wonder if there weren't two versions of things running through the authors' minds.  That is, they might have had a version where our friend makes it out and has to do paperwork, and this other one where he is going to die?  Although maybe that's how Lovecraft felt a proper anglo saxon should act at the end, carefully filling out a report.

Another jarring note is the section where Stanfield is complaining about masks.  It just seems so coffee break to complain about the equipment that way while you are facing your own death in one of several horrible ways.

I now absolutely think the Carter mask was all about the Martian Carter, as the masks are specifically called so heavy they would wear a regular man out.  If you recall why R. Carter, a "regular guy" had superpowers on Mars, referencing how heavy the mask was makes this a blatant shout out.  Of course, it could have had other meanings as well, and maybe HPL also had something to say about black consciousness as it existed in the 1920s/30s. 

I totally see the "there is another secret race of aliens" reading.  The writers throw that out there more than once explicitly.  It's important to remember that this is from the thoughts of a character who demonstrates he is arrogantly dismissive of the alien's abilities whenever possible, and this argument fits what he would like to believe rather than anything he has evidence for.

Of course, this is Lovecraft, so "We Shoggoths built the place, and when digested you leave no trace, but your soul we'll suck out from your face, and slowly drive mad at our own pace" principle may apply at all times.  But he never follows that thread, and it's not required to assume a looming Cthulhu sized shadow for the story to work.  It could be there isn't one.

Then he specifically mentions what I assume is force fields when he first encounters the wall.  Specifically he has an Orwellian marketing brand "N-Force Barrier" for it.  Nice.  He says that's typical of "forbidden" zones on the earth.. which is interesting, what's in those?  I wanna see.

When the narrator talks about the walls, he clearly states they could be either made of a substance or not, he's not sure.  He is certain that either way it doesn't matter.  Ha ha. 

As the story progresses, I definitely got the sense that Lovecraft/Sterling didn't understand how refraction works.  I remember enough Newton to know that "having no refraction" does not make something "invisible" in a gas or water per se.  The narrator seems to believe that, at least.  Although it could just be he is being a little fast and loose with terms, I guess.

I won't get into how the index of refraction works, but it made me wonder if the author's grasp of what makes objects truly invisible was entirely clear.  Ha ha.

Anyway moving on from that, eventually once he is trapped for a while, he decides to try digging under the walls.  The author goes past the 6 inches of mud and begins to dig away a the clay under that down to 3' and finds no lower edge to the walls when he gives up after hitting stuff to hard to dig through.  He says there is no lower edge specifically.

The only way the wall could stay invisible 3' deep in mud would be to mimic the mud around it, so a sort of a appearance shifting camouflage wall.  If Lovecraft even mentioned such an idea that would be nice but he never does.

Of course, that sort of blows it for me.  It's hard to see how I filled this logical inconsistency in my mind with the walls changed shape to prevent his escape.

If the walls oozed down into the ooze, you would think our would be escapee would have noticed this and complained.  He's good at complaining.  Although he is a little thick, too, as demonstrated when he fails to immediately run away with the glowing Stone of Wealthy Retirement he finds at the Entrance to the Labyrinth of Unseen Pressboard, he is good at complaining.

BTW:  at the end, the humans haven't actually destroyed the maze.  The 2nd narrator uses the future tense throughout.  He "shall" blow up the thing with dynamite, then do chemical analysis.  They did map the maze out using ropes, and apparently were able to bite into the surface with diamond drills, but that's as far as they got.

Just like Sam Gamgee says, "Sam what about a bit of rope?"  Wise words to those setting out on mysterious adventures of any sort.

So I conclude it's inconclusive what's going on with the maze.  The walls might be made of anything.  And that's really the problem with the story, no follow through.  There are about five ways you could have reworked the wall problem and nailed the landing on this that are all pretty cool, and what we have is basically a soggy mess that doesn't do any of them.

I think the story needed an editor, badly.

[Moon-lit Meadow-monster]

Saying the walls have no refractive power isn't too bad. The refractive index of earthly-air is very close to one.
That is, it has almost no refractive power. The authors probably didn't want people to just imagine glass.

I like the cover posted here more than the one on the front page; it references the story better.

Newton Applefig, I mentioned a "wheat-field" effect as another possible way a trench might hide:

http://www.thewallpapers.org/photo/21922/2-Wheat-Field.jpg
 

[Inner Prop]

There's also the oversight that if they're watching him, surely the maze is invisible to them too? Its just as much of a death trap for them, difference is they know about them.

Maybe they can smell it or have some sort of additional sense that we don't, like the motion sensors sharks have or the ability to feel the magnetic field of the earth that some birds seem to have.

[Newton Applefig]

Saying the walls have no refractive power isn't too bad. The refractive index of earthly-air is very close to one.
That is, it has almost no refractive power. The authors probably didn't want people to just imagine glass.

I like the cover posted here more than the one on the front page; it references the story better.

Newton Applefig, I mentioned a "wheat-field" effect as another possible way a trench might hide:

http://www.thewallpapers.org/photo/21922/2-Wheat-Field.jpg
 

Quite right, a low refractive index would be nearly invisible for a normal wall in an earth-type air with fairly low humidity that had fairly even temperature ( the gas has an even index of refraction ).  Of course, Venus is foggy, loaded with cyanogens, apparently, and one would suppose has a large amount of air circulation to produce such constant rain.  Also, the maze is not 1 pane of transparent aluminum... it's a giant round structure with nested walls 20' high that... one assumes... the foggy air is being blown against and bouncing off and swirling around inside etc.

But, I'll throw that bone.  If it is a force field, it might even allow gases through freely while repelling anything thicker than a liquid ( leaving aside water fog is generally made of small droplets rather than gases ). 

My point was none of that.  It was that based on how the authors threw the terms around, I suspect they didn't understand the principles involved.  I'm not definitive on it, but it's fishy.  It's possible they did understand the physics, and were just a little sloppy with the phrasing.  That's not a fatal for me.

But especially... the mud.  The mud is a real place where I bog down.  Ha ha....

Really though, an "edge on" illusion is possible.  A nanometer thread cannot be seen by human eyes, it's microscopic.  Microscopic walls would not be visible, and very very thin ones would be likewise harder and harder to see in evenly colored mud, even close up, the closer they got to invisibly small. 

But Lovecraft never mentions it.  That's a pretty big one not to mention, that they were so small.  Ah, the irony.

Such a person-deflecting wall made so thin would also be hard and "sharp" on it's edges, unless they were rounded in some way.  I don't think that's fatal flaw.  I joked "molding" but actually I can "see" a solution to that.  If their "doors" were actually formed by slow curving turns with no real "edge" it could work.  After all, the maze appears to be based on a sea-shell design, a giant circle with "spiraling" corridors.  I suppose it's not impossible.

But Lovecraft never mentions that either.  He has an almost painfully long narrative describing turn after turn, maybe to up the word count for sale to publisher, but he leaves out the most critical bits for verisimilitude? 

It's a lot to ask of the reader.

so I have to conclude either:

A) it's an oversight of logic
B) it's an oversight of storytelling.

  Either way, iI have to conclude "what a lot of gaps we have to fill in for Lovecraft".  We are working pretty hard here on his behalf.

[Newton Applefig]

There's also the oversight that if they're watching him, surely the maze is invisible to them too? Its just as much of a death trap for them, difference is they know about them.

Maybe they can smell it or have some sort of additional sense that we don't, like the motion sensors sharks have or the ability to feel the magnetic field of the earth that some birds seem to have.

Right, a wall invisible to us might not be invisible to a bat, a snake that senses infrared or an insect that can see ultraviolet.

[Genus Unknown]

The implication of that, then, is that the maze must have been constructed specifically with humans in mind. It isn't some old, important part of their culture, it's just something they built to kill a couple of those guys who keep taking their Magic Space Crystals in the most indirect way possible.

[Newton Applefig]

The implication of that, then, is that the maze must have been constructed specifically with humans in mind. It isn't some old, important part of their culture, it's just something they built to kill a couple of those guys who keep taking their Magic Space Crystals in the most indirect way possible.

Indirect, or sadistic.

Or, possibly, the maze is meant as a test of intelligence and perception.  A sort of experiment.

[Inner Prop]

Maybe it's their version of a cockfight or dogfight.  That's why they were taking bets and partying.

Actually that makes even more sense that way.  THEY know how close he is to the exit.

[Newton Applefig]

Certainly, it works as a nasty spectator sport too.

But, to go back to the "lizard love" model, you could also see what they were doing as "helping" as best they could.

The formed a circle, showing Stanfield where he was in relation to the outer walls.  They then clustered near the exit.  Why? 

Maybe to show him how to get out, short of risking their own lives in the maze?

Maybe to beat him to death if he escaped?

Possibly, if the stones are associated with entities more powerful, this was the best they could do for the hapless victim, even though he offended them.  They still pitied a viper caught in a trap. 

I prefer to leave them grey.  The only thing we can say with fair certainty is generally they aren't openly hostile unless the stones are involved, in which case they turn nasty and almost desperate, using stone age guerilla tactics against the offenders.

For all we know, they are the drones of some incredibly intelligent and powerful hive mind that just hasn't bothered to sweep the humans off the face of the planet, and doesn't count individual demise as "death".  Earth, I mean.

The lizard hive is sort of a "back to nature" sort, so she is trying to live in an ecologically conscious manner, and hasn't broken out the can of Simian Away^tm yet, because she's hoping to manage the pests using sustainable methods.

Or it could be they don't talk because they are an entire culture of mimes.

Hence the invisible walls.

[old book]

The physics are all wrong because he is really suffering from the hallucinations of the mirage-plant in symbiosis with carnivorous skorah plants in the vicinity. The man-lizards aren't really there, the walls aren't there. There is no crystal. The only part which is real is "He had a record scroll in his left hand and a pen in his right, and seemed to have been writing when he died." When he died screaming on his hospital bed. The coda is the "dream within a dream" which happens to reflect reality in certain points.

[Genus Unknown]

Alternative theory: this is a bad story that doesn't make a lot of sense because it wasn't thought out very well.

[old book]

I blame Kenneth Sterling. He screwed it all up. He wouldn't let Lovecraft fix the mud under the walls so Lovecraft was forced to make it into one long hallucination.