Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have never gotten in touch before and would like to give it a shot, send something please. You can reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send us fair game. We appreciate all kinds of messages, especially if you have something interesting to add to a recent topic we've talked about. Let's see, rob I'm going to start with a message about the recent total solar eclipse that pass through the middle of the United States. We didn't do an episode about eclipses because we've done that in the past, especially tied to eclipses in the past. But we did do a weird house cinema episode on the movie Dragon Slayer because it features an eclipse that'll come up again later in the episode. But we also just got a response seemingly about the eclipse itself, and this is from Hannah. Hannah says subject line moon exploration via swan power. Hannah says, Hi, Robin Joe, I'm helping my husband prepare a lecture that covers the eclipse for his physics students. I ran across this book and I had to share love the podcast. Keep up the good work, my best, Hannah. And what Hannah shares is a link to a seventeenth century book called The Man in the Moon. And this is Moon spelled n E. I like the extra e in there makes it fancier. It's almost like a more costly version of the Moon. The Man in the Moon or a discourse of a voyage thither. So this is a book that was published under the pseudonymous name Domingo Gonsales. The real author was an English bishop named Francis Godwin. And this is a novel that was published in sixteen thirty eight, several years after the author's death, said by some to be the first science fiction novel written in English. So it's a first person narrative telling the story of a Spaniard named Domingo Gonzalez who travels to the Moon on an aircraft powered by swans and discovers that the moon is filled with people who have an advanced civilization of their own, and I think also are significantly involved in like kidnapping children from Earth.
On Kaladan, we ruled with air and land power, but on Earth we will rule with swanpower.
How did you describe this Swan machine? Like, there's an illustration on the inner fold of the title page I found so we can look at this. Rob It's like a it looks sort of like the Swan copter. Well, it's got a mounted seat really just kind of a crossbar on the bottom and the rest is just bars. It's like an electrical transmission tower. And they taped a bunch of birds to the tower by the feet. And also in this this illustration, they're they're like flying him over the moon or to the moon and passing over the mountain of purgatory.
Yeah. Oh, it raises a lot of questions. Yeah, it's it's kind of like a kite scenario. It looks like like the bare minimum harvesting of the power of the Swan and uh it yeah, right, And then the amount of purgatory being there also raised his questions, like how does that factor into it? Are you using some sort of using that as some sort of like a slingshot technique, sling shotting off of the mount of Purgatory via eton or not that sort of a donic zone on the top, so that you can just go right to the moon. I don't know.
Purgatory O gravity assist, Yeah, yeah, But anyway, so I started. I found a full text of this book, and I was scanning through it, and a few things caught my eye. First, I'll quote a passage here with some edits, just describing how the character attains spaceflight on the swan copter. He says, it was now the season that these birds were wont to take their flight away, as our cuckoos and swallows do in Spain towards the autumn. They as after I perceived, mindful of their usual voyage. Even as I began to settle myself for the taking of them in as it were, with one consent, rose up, and, having no other place higher to make toward to my unspeakable fear and amazement, struck bolt upright, and never did linn linn, meaning cease, never did cease, towering upward and still upward for the space, as I might guess of one whole hour. Truly, I must confess the horror and amazement of that place was such as if I had not been armed with a true Spanish courage and resolution, I must needs have died there with very fear. But the next thing that did most trouble me was the swiftness of motion, such as did even almost stop my breath. If I should liken it to an arrow out of a bow, or to a stone cast down from the top of some high tower, it would come far short and short. So he's describing mind bending speeds. And this passage starts to give a hint of how interestingly this novel is not just an exercise in imagination. It actually engages significantly with scientific theories of the day of the seventeenth century, engaging with the works of Galileo and Kepler. For example, I came across a passage where the narrator is using his fictional observations to make the case that the Earth does in fact rotate, and it is not the heavens that spin around a stationary Earth. And the author also makes points related to the idea of gravity and to the speed of the motion of the objects in the heavens, and so forth.
Nice nice kind of fitting them that we see the amount of purgatory in the background here, because as we've at least discussed in Passing before you know you have you have a number of scientific ideas wrapped up in Dante's divine comedy as well, something that we might come back to again in the future and do a proper deep dive on.
Totally agree, though I should be clear, I was just saying it's the amount of purgatory because it looks like it to me. I couldn't find that it says that text. Okay, that's just my editor.
I love the idea of it amount of purgatory. I accept no other interpretation.
However, there is another thing that I found really interesting about this book, which is that this early science fiction novel does mix in elements of horror. On the journey to the Moon, while traveling through the space between, Gonzalez is surrounded by spirits of a wicked nature. In his view, space is full of devils. I'm gonna read from the text here another thing there was exceeding and more than exceeding troublesome unto me, and that was the illusions of devils and wicked spirits who the first day of my arrival came about me in great numbers, carrying the shapes and likeness of men and women, wondering at me like so many birds about an owl, and speaking diverse kinds of languages, which I understood not do birds wonder about an owl. I'm not sure what that means, but I like the image, so anyway. The devils of the space make him all kinds of promises. They tell him they can take him safely back to Spain, they can give him earthly comforts and pleasures. He turns all this down, though he does accept some food they offer him, writing quote, least in the mean, while I should starve, they did so readily enough, and brought me very good flesh and fish of diverse sorts, well dressed, but that it was exceeding fresh, and without any manner of relish of salt. Wine. Also I tasted there of diverse sorts, as good as any in Spain, and beer no better in all Antwerp. But when it comes time to eat, things go south, he says he quote, in great haste fell to searching of my pockets for the victuals I had reserved, as aforesaid, But to my great amazement and discomfort, I found instead of partridge and capon, which I thought to have put there, a mingle mangle of dry leaves of goat's hair, sheep or goat's dung moss and such like trash. As for my canary wine, it was turned to a stinking and filthy kind of liquor, like the urine of some beast. So space demons are always trying to feed you goat hair and beast urine.
Oh wow, that is all marvelous. I've so many thoughts on that. On one hand, kind of shades of Warhammer forty thousand to come there with this idea of traveling through space putting you in a demonic peril or potential demonic peril, and then kind of shades of the Gate duology Gate the Gate and the Gate Too or Gate Too, a couple of wonderful kind of Gromlin movies that I discussed in Weird House Cinema with guest co host David Streepy, because in the second one, the demons will grant your wishes, but your wishes turned to the literal poop the next day, So you wished for you know, a sports car, Well, guess what is now parked out in front of your house. It's an elephant sized chunk of just just fecal matter.
But I like that here he specifies what animal it comes from. Does the gate say what animal it comes from?
No, they don't really get into it. But it makes sense that it would be goat. You don't give him demonic connotations.
There have a label on it, like the you know the ones at the grocery store that tell you where the fish came from.
Yeah, this is from goat. I don't know why. I don't know how goat dung would be worse. I've certainly been around goat dung before, and it's not the worst dung at all. Give me goat dung over dog dung or any kind of carnivore dung any day of the week.
It's funny. He does specify goats for the dung, but he does not and for the hair, by the way, goat hair and goat dung, but does not specify which beast the urine is from.
Well, you know, you can poke around in the fecal matter and you can sort of it can make a lot of you know, there is a lot of identification via feces. Urine, however, is more complicated. Matter that may require a bit of science or alchemy. And I guess, actually, goat dung, you know, is round, So I guess he could tell it's like, this is clearly goat dung. Look how round it is.
Yeah, anyway, thank you so much, Hannah. It was very interesting looking into this book.
All right. Well, since we're talking about literature and demons, I'm gonna skip to this one from Jim, responding to mention of the short story The Hounds of Tendlos. This is a story, a weird story from the nineteen thirties, actually nineteen twenty nine according to the State I just looked up by Frank bucking up Long, so was originally published in Weird Tales. And anyway, we heard some feedback here from Jim. Jim says, I'm thinking Robert may know this, but this tale was the inspiration for Metallica's thrasher All Nightmare Long, which was on there in my opinion underrated ninth studio album Death Magnetic. I found an audio version of the story on horror Babbel, a podcast with a great narrator who does a lot of the old thirties sci fi and horror fiction, including Lovecraft Robert E. Howard Clark, Ashton Smith and the like.
Well, thank you, Jim. I did not know the connection with that song. In fact, I did not know the song at all because so I grew up loving Metallica, but I have never really gotten into their twenty first century stuff, and so I checked out the track and I did not expect to like it. As an adult, my Metallica preferences have shifted toward the earliest of their catalog. Like the Metallica I like now is the stuff that is the most immature and anti social, with the driest production, the stuff that tends to have like really fast, raw, a little bit sloppy but still awesome instrumental performances and lyrics that always vaguely imply the existence of some near future conflict called the metal War, which I understand will be fought with metal over access to metal. I think that sound, however, Jim, despite the fact that I have largely stayed away from recent Metallica, I dug it up and I thought this track was pretty good. I give it to him. Maybe it's that classic cosmic horror that puts the gang back into original form.
Yeah awesome, Yeah, I was not familiar with this nection either, and I haven't really listened to any of the more recent Metallica albums, though I have to say I love I love the old stuff, but I also really loved like some of the at the time latter day tracks like the Memory Remains a lot of people hate that song, but I could never understand how this sounds pretty good. Maryanne Faithful's on this, I don't know. I like it had a cool video, but at any rate, that's fascinating. Though I know that at least one or some of the members of Metallica do have a lot of love for some of the old weird fiction. You know, there are some lovecraft in references on some of their older material, so it's not all that surprising that they would continue to find inspiration and work from this time period. When we recorded this episode, I mentioned that I had started reading The Hounds of Tendalos, but I had not finished it. I finished it in the days following that initial episode, and I have to say it's it's a real banger. I highly recommend this particular short story. Again, you can find like an ebook of this gentleman's work for like ninety nine cents and also you can find it in you know, text form, online and all. But basically skip now if you don't want any spoilers. But basically, again, a gentleman takes some time traveling space, drugs and experiences like all of human history and before human history all at once, and has all sorts of revelations and it just just overpowers him. And then these strange creatures, the hounds of tendalos, begin to come after him through the corners of things, the unnatural corners of reality. So he has a very balanced response to this. He gets some plaster and he removes all of the corners from his from his home so he can live safely, so the hounds cannot get him. But then there is an earthquake and it disrupts the perfection of these curves and income the hounds, and of course the hounds destroy him. And then later his friend comes in and finds him. I want to read just a quick quote here, just to give you a grizzly taste of it. Quote. Chalmers lay stretched upon his back in the center of the room. He was starkly nude, and his chest and arms were covered with a peculiar bluish puss or eye cores. His head lay grotesquely upon his chest. It had been completely severed from his body, and the features were twisted and torn and horribly mangled. Nowhere was there a trace of blood. Nineteen twenty nine. It hits pretty hard.
The horror of this period. Does love an unearthly jelly, doesn't it. There's got to be an icre on there.
Yeah. So anyway, a very fun tale. I haven't read anything else by this author, but I have a whole book of his stuff now, so I'm gonna have to get in there and find some other other tales worth discussing.
All right. Next, we got this message from Daniel on Facebook on our Facebook discussion module. This was in response to our conversation about different names for what we call dust bunnies. Daniel says in Swedish a dust bunny is dam rata, meaning dust rat, which seems even more fitting. A bunny is a cute, often domesticated animal. A rat is a bringer of decay and pestilence. I interpret Daniel to be saying, in the popular imagination, you know, not slandering rats as an animal, though of course they do in fact in some cases bring disease.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm not cutting rats any slack here there.
Gris Daniel goes on. I had always assumed it would be the same in the other Scandinavian languages, but apparently not. Norwegian goes with hohosa stove house dust, straightforward but not very imaginative. Danish, on the other hand, seems to go the other way with nullermand, which translates to the ominous, the outright ominous nothing men.
Oo, the nothing men are under your sweetie, we have to clean tomorrow. Yeah, that's definitely ominous. This is great. This is exactly what we wanted to hear from everybody. Be it because again I found, like, at least the resources I was discovering online, it didn't have a lot about the various international terms for dust bunnies. So keep them coming. And thank you Daniel for writing in with this.
Yes, please, yeah, and thank you Daniel.
All Right, this one comes to us from Harry. It says, hey, Robin, Joe, Harry from Stockholm. Here, listening to your third dust episode on my way to endo work. I was struck by a scenario you mentioned just before diving in the Sobriety's Paradox. This was the parable of the movie set designer who has no dust machine and must wait for the scenes requisite dust to accumulate. It struck me that this scenario is a good example of an observer's behavior changing the outcome of the observation. Like photons bouncing off electrons and quantum theory, the set designer's breath, their movement to and from the point of anxious observation would inhibit the accumulation of dust by changing the air occurrence of the room. It tugs on the heartstrings to imagine the poor set designer as Tantalus, expectantly watching one spot for dust as other neglected surfaces of the set become dusty. Thanks and keep up the good work, Harry.
Oh that's great, Harry. What a sad scene you've painted here.
And I kind of want to see it as like a short film. Now this is it could be quite interesting, the dust Wrangler.
All right, we can finish up with a couple of messages about weird house cinema. This is from Liza. Liza says Hi, Rob, Joe and jj E. Liza here, longtime listener, first time writer. I just finished your Dead Mountaineers Hotel episode and I have to say, growing up in Russia, I have never heard of this film. Perhaps it was too controversial or too dark in nature for its time. I ended up watching it as soon as I finished the episode, and boy was I not disappointed. In answer to your question, the pool game they are playing is called Russian billiard or Russian pyramid. It's essentially the same as pool, but the balls are bigger, which makes it quite a bit harder to score. Fascinating, Liza says, I'm very excited to recommend you another Soviet sci fi film called Ivan Vasilievich back to the Future. Unlike Dead in Mountaineer's Hotel, it is very much a comedy and an all time classic. Our version of Monty Python, one might say, might not be the best fit for Weird House, as it's not horror by any means, but definitely a must watch. Nonetheless, Best of luck and keep up the great work, Liza from Russia. Oh and it just occurred to me that maybe Lisa. I don't know Lisa or Liza. Thank you for writing in Yeah, and thank you for the recommendation.
Yeah, this film is completely off my radar. I'm not familiar with it. All Right, here's another weird house response. This one is from Pat and this is a response to our discussion of Dragon Slayer, which also gets into a brief discussion of just eclipse movies solar eclipse movies in general, of which we said there are very few to choose from. Pat rides in and says, guys, another fun show. Best solar eclipse movie A Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court a very silly Bing Crosby musical. Thanks Pat from Larida.
Yeah, I didn't consider this because I actually have not seen this movie, but it's weird to me that there would be a goofy bing Crosby musical based on a Connecticut Yankee, because I mean, I guess the novel is funny, but so. It's a satirical novel by Mark Twain, which is about a late nineteenth century engineer who gets knocked on the head and then wakes up in early medieval England, figures out the date, and uses his knowledge of a coming solar eclipse to amaze the superstitious locals and eventually gain a position of power in King Arthur's Court, where he tries to go on to turn medieval England into a democratic republic. And give them industrial age, technology and so forth. But the church and the aristocracy resist his reforms and revolt against him.
Yeah. I read this story when I was a kid, and I remember, I don't know, being at least mildly amused by it. I don't remember loving it. But of course it's been the basis for several films. Of course the nineteen forty nine adaptation. Also there is a nineteen seventy nine film that is sometimes referred to as a Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. There is a nineteen ninety five film, A Kid in King Arthur's Court, and then of course there is the two thousand and one film Black Knight, starring Martin Lawrence as a time traveler.
I think it's interesting that it has all of these adaptations where the tone is quite silly. I guess maybe the tone of the novel is quite silly, But from what I understand, the point of the satire is pretty sharp, like it was a humorous attack on people who unlike Medievalism, on people who had a romantic, idealized view of medieval European life of monarchy and chivalry or nightly virtues like what you would get in Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, and in the political context where Twain was writing, this romantic medievalist view was especially common among people who also romanticized the US Antebellum South and the Confederacy in the Civil War. So Twain, I think, with that association, is reacting against that and painting a picture of knights and kings not as noble and angelic beings but as violent and ignorant hoarders of power. And I've not seen this movie from nineteen forty nine, but it is fun to think about it that way and then think they turned it into a funny musical starring Bing Crosby. But anyway, Bing Crosby musicals are not something I know a whole lot about, you know. It's I think the extent of my knowledge is having seen the Christmas One, whatever it is, the what's the one where they're in the army and they're saying the White Christmas. Yeah, that's on in the background and around Christmas time. But that's about all I know. But I'm curious enough that I would give this a watch now. But to come back to the topic of the eclipse, like how it figures into the story, it seems like it fits with the themes because the knowledge of the eclipse that the main character possesses in the story sort of symbolizes the novel's view that, like, whatever the faults of the modern world, democracy and science and technology are better than kings and knights and superstition and get I am curious how sharply these themes come through in the musical.
Yeah, and I have these same questions about two thousand and ones Black Knight, starring Martin Lawrence but co starring Tom Wilkinson and also Kevin Conway. Kevin Conway is the narrator on the nineteen nineties Outer Limit series, so he's the voice that comes in at the beginning and at the end of every episode and kind of like tries to wrap things up in this kind of nice philosophical packaging.
M okay.
So, I don't know if any of you have thoughts on the movie Black Night, write in maybe it's worth looking at. Like I say, anytime I see the interest in cast members, I'm kind of intrigued. And I guess the real core idea here is like just the basic concept of a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's court. It's a great fish out of time story. So yes, it's easy to apply it to various times, various actors, various comedic sensibilities, and so forth.
Yeah, change the characteristics of the protagonist. And in any case, you could say something by like taking any particular person from the present and sending them to the past and saying how would the past react.
All right, we're gonna go ahead and close up the mail bag for this episode of Listener Mail, but keep it coming. We'd love to hear from you. We'll throw out that email address here in a minute. If you would like to join the discussion module on Facebook, well just look it up. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module, and you have to ask to be admitted. All you have to do is succeed on a really softball trivia question about the show. And if you do that, then I guess you're probably an actual listener and you are not a robot, and you can enter and interact with other listeners to the show. And if you would like to have access to the discord, we'll just email us and we'll send you the link.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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