Episode 89 – The Trap
This week Chad and Chris are caught in The Trap! Another Lovecraft collaboration, this time with Henry S. Whitehead.
Don’t forget, we’re still holding our ransom for the reading of The Call of Cthulhu with Andrew Leman – hit us with a donation!
We’ll be off for TWO weeks, and back in September with The Dreams in the Witch House! Scary!
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Such a nice offer to make PDFs, but perhaps there is no need? The Kindle app can be had for free for smartphones and laptops. No Kindle needed! Though I have one and look forward to your publications.
I’d never read this one before, and it’s ok… JUST ok… But when it comes to goofy mirror-world stories, sorry, but THIS thing has it ALL over “The Trap”, and it has a memorable punchline to boot.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/115/lost-in-space-the-magic-mirror
Oh no! It’s a TRAP!
I think this was Admiral Ackbar’s favorite Lovecraft collab.
Chad
Don’t get swept out to sea by Irene.
Ackbar – Mon Calamari? Or DEEP ONE INFILTRATOR?!
meanwhile, never heard Chad so frustrated with a story as with this one!
Many Bothans died to bring us this story.
Jesus Harold Christ on a f**king Rubber Crutch!! I LIVE in Florida!
Where in Florida will You be heading?
Alejandro, hppodcraft, Marcus Good, Mike J: You guys crack me up, hilarious. May the deep-ones be with you!
Oh Noes! Many covered bridges GONE in Vermont flooding!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LllfA1V16jY
Another one to be filed under slightly lame efforts…what did HP think opf this? Did he make any comments re this..I wonder what made him decide to collaborate? Rainy day in Florida in between bouts of wrestling..”Hei Im pooped! Lets write a story called The Trap!’ maybe not.
Now I recall what I wanted to add: mirror-entities. There are actual real world cases of people born with “mirrored” bodies – eg heart on the right side. They can live normal lives, it’s just unusual and only detected when someone gives them a check-up and wonders why the heartbeat is so faint.
Alan Moore, on the other hand, used a “mirror” Alice in the Almanac portion of the second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. She died sometime later, however, from malnutrition; not only was her physical appearance reversed – so too were her proteins – and all life on earth currently uses proteins that ‘curl’ in one direction (I forget whether it’s clockwise or anti-_; Alice had the opposite, meaning she could gain no nutrition from our non-mirrored food.
Thirteen!
This show is now my favorite Podcast. Awesome when on the road and in hotels.
You disparage Gerald Canevin as one of those characters who just happens to know about telepathy and such, but to readers of Weird Tales, where this story first appeared in March, 1932, Canevin would have been familiar from 7 oearlier stories (plus 3 more in other magazines) of experiences with the mystical.
I think the reason the mirror-verse reversals are so inconsistent is because it is the exact opposite of what we would expect from a mirror universe, i.e., total reversal of normal world physics. Only certain things are reversed and screwed around with because we would expect everything to be weird, some things aren’t, making it all the stranger.
Or it’s just ponies. My guess is the latter, not that thought-out explanation above, no sir.
@The Dunwich Whotsit…..
*Bro-Hoof*
Jebus. What a dorky story. And parents that believed that malarky explanation for their missing kid are the kind that would voluntily send them away to “Bible camp” with that nice Captain Howdy from down the street.
The story sounds like something a pedophile brought into questioning would come up with. Think of the story that way and it’s terrifying.
Maybe the worse story I’ve ever read. And the pseudo-sciFi explanations are so arbitrary and inconsistent… I imagine he didn’t wanted to write it and was ashamed of it.
[…] this was completely inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Trap, which I heard about from the HP Podcraft podcast (which is freaking awesome if you haven’t heard). Admittedly it isn’t a very good […]
[…] this was completely inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Trap, which I heard about from the HP Podcraft podcast (which is freaking awesome if you haven’t heard). Admittedly it isn’t a very good […]
Your link to the story doesn’t work. Here’s the corrected link: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/trap.aspx