SS4 17 Vulthoom

Join us as we plunge into the Martian underworld with Vulthoom! We talk radio drama, characters, Star Wars and Trek, the Smithian trip, fungal clubs, and television.
Reader:  Shelley de Cruz
Favourite words: veridical, stridor, anthalite, Trimurti, houris, gnomons, ciceronage, acclivitous.
Artwork by JB Lee
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SPEAKER_00 0:10

Strange Shadows. The Kass and Smith Podcast. To a cursory observer, it might have seemed that Bob Haynes and Paul Septimus Chandler had little enough in common other than the predicament of being stranded without funds on an alien world. Haynes, the third assistant pilot of an Etherliner, had been charged with insubordination by his superiors and had been left behind in Igna, the commercial metropolis of Mars, and the port of all space traffic. The charge against him was wholly a matter of personal spite. But so far, Haynes had not succeeded in finding a new berth, and the month's salary paid to him at parting had been devoured with appalling swiftness by the pirate raids of the Tellurian Hotel. Chandler, a professional writer of interplanetary fiction, had made a voyage to Mars to fortify his imaginative talent by a solid groundwork of observation and experience. His money had given out after a few weeks, and fresh supplies expected from his publisher had not yet arrived. The two men, apart from their misfortunes, shared an illimitable curiosity concerning all things Martian. Their thirst for the exotic, their proclivity for wandering into places usually avoided by terrestrials, had drawn them together in spite of obvious differences of temperament and had made them fast friends.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Greetings, folks, and welcome to season four, episode 17 of Strange Shadows, the Clark Ash and Smith Podcast. The voice you just heard there was Shelley DeCruz from Graveheart Designs, reading the opening paragraph of today's story. I'm one of your hosts, Tim Mendies.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

And I'm the other one, Rob Poynton. Yes, welcome. Welcome back to Mars, in fact, with another one of Smith's Martian stories. Though uh a little bit different, this one from the the previous two, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Yeah, because those those ones you could definitely call sort of pseudo-survival horror, really, like proto survival horror. Whereas this I'd put into more sort of yeah, sort of Star Trek Doctor Who kind of sci-fi, isn't it? It's uh, you know, that kind of deal.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

It felt quite familiar to me this one. I think this is Smith recycling some of his regular sci-fi tropes, isn't it? It doesn't have that same atmosphere of dread, I don't think, particularly.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

No, but it also has a little bit of the psychedelia about it, doesn't it? Because uh I I do wonder if he'd been partaking of the devil's lettuce when uh you know having a good old toke because he it gets a bit psychedelic towards the end.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

It does, it does indeed, and well, uh a very plant-themed story again as well, isn't it? Yeah, quite common with Smith, also, yeah. However, before we get into all that botanical nonsense, uh couple of quick news items. We'd like to remind you, of course, of the Innsmouth Literary Festival, September the 19th in Oddly Moist Bedford. As you know, we have Stephen Jones and Les Edwards confirmed as our special guests. And we have a number of other guests who have now confirmed, including our first-time guest, Marco Visconti, uh, an occult expert who has just recently released a book called Black Stars in Dim Carcosa, The Necronomican Field Notes. So he will be there on the day with copies of that to sign, no doubt.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, and my band, Griving Green, has just released an eight-track mini album, which is now up for digital download on Bandcamp and contains the uh Lovecraftian song The Shuttered Room. So, yeah, that's available for download now.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Brilliant, brilliant. And just one last thing: my mothership campaign, the latest episode has just been uploaded to YouTube to my Dragon's Teeth channel. So if you'd like to follow the exploits of uh Assault Team 5 as they sink slowly to start with, but deeper and deeper into all sorts of horror and sanity blasting encounters, then do take a look at that. Nice. All right, shall we start with our favorite words? I I had a few here that I was unfamiliar with, and I think there's some we have covered before as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with you on that. Um, there's quite a few I sort of disqualified because I know we've had them before, but there was a few, and there was a couple I had to look up that I wasn't familiar with at all. But the first one I'm gonna go with is veridical, which is a really lovely sounding word, isn't it? Veridical. You could even roll your veridical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Which means showing what is true or real. Ah, one that I was unfamiliar with was stridor, not the bloke in Lord of the Rings, Master Feudo. There's that stridor. It's actually something quite unpleasant. It's uh a high-pitched sound that people make when they're breathing, particularly if they're suffering from some illness like croup. Oh, totally unfamiliar with that, and it doesn't sound anything like what it is either, does it? I suppose you have strident, yes, but that's more loud, isn't it? This seems to be a very specific kind of noise. Yeah, well, susseration.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah, my next one is anthelite, which quite simply is a fossilized plant.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

We also get mention of trimurti, which is the Hindu triad of the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the creator, the preserver, and of course Shiva the destroyer.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Lovely. Keeping on that kind of uh theme. My next one is Horis, which yes, in um Islamic tradition of the virgins that you believe to get in paradise. Yeah, heavenly female beings, apparently, described as pure companions with beautiful eyes who await the faithful in paradise.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

And now I'm we may have had this one before, I'm not sure, but I'm gonna put it in anyway. Gnomons, that starts with a G, Gnomons. And that is the pointer on a sundial, also any sort of L-shaped carpenter's tool. Carpenter's square, I think they're called. Yeah. And it was uh that was a tool that the Egyptians used to measure the height of the sun, which obviously ties in with the sundial use.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Indeed. Yeah, no, we haven't had that before because I haven't heard it before. I had to look it up. That's the you learn something new every day. I've finally learned what the the pointy bit on a sundial is called. It's a gnomon. There we go. Yeah, finally I've got cicerinage. I'm that's the pronunciation I'm going with, um, which is is the plural of cicerone, which means a guided tour.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Uh a cicerone is a guide. Yes, I had to look that up as well. Now I've seen a couple of pronunciations that it can be an S sound, but I've also heard or saw ch sound as well, cicerone, which I guess harkens more back to the Italian. Now, the nice thing with this is we have an example of Smith using this in the letter. And for this we turn to Worlds Unknown, the letters of Clark Ashton Smith, the Wondry Brothers, and R. H. Barlow, and it concerns our old friend Miss Sully. This is dated June 28th, 1933, and is to Donald Wandry. And it's talking about the visit of Miss Sully, Helen Sully. Helen is about your age, I think, in the middle twenties. She is a talented musician with a taste for the classic, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, etc. She teaches music and drawing in the local grammar school. Art museums will be exactly in her line. Also, she will be glad to meet unusual and interesting people of any age, an intellectual type, particularly the members of the gang. Her stay in New York will be pretty brief, three days at the most, since she is now planning two days in Providence. I think we can guess where this is going. Where I am committing her to the citarinage of HP. This will be part of an extensive continental tour, including Quebec and other Canadian points. The Sullies, mother, and two sisters are friends of longstanding and are the only people of cultivation that I know here in Auburn.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Nice. Is that the trip where Lovecraft took her to the graveyard and started going, woo? That's the one. Oh, brilliant. Oh, that's excellent. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

Yeah. I I thought it was just lovely. We often talk about this with Lovecraft. He writes his letters as he writes his stories, and here we have Smith doing the same. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

I like that. Yeah. Friends. Mrs. Sully and her two sisters.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Oh my. He was a horn dog, wasn't he? Let's face it. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Oh dear. Well, a man's gonna have a hobby. Well, yes, yes, it kept him busy on those long Auburn nights, I'm sure. Uh my final choice of words is acclivitous, which we may have had before. That's simply a slope or an incline. Yeah. But again, that's got a nice sound to it. I'm feeling rather acclivitous.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah, I use acclivity quite a lot. It's one of those words I like to drop in to make me look intellectual. Yeah, acclivity or declivity. Well, we try, don't we? We do too. We gotta try, you know. It's better than an upward slope. And acclivity, it just sounds better. Very nice, very nice. Right, oh then. Should we have a look at the publication history? When Smith was originally planning this story out, he did so under another another name, and thank God he decided to change it. It was originally known as the Beachcomas of Mars.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

Wow, that sounds like a kind of surf track or something. It does, doesn't it? That's what I was thinking. It sounds like, you know. Here's the ventures with their latest hit, Beach Comas of Mars. Yeah. One of those twangy kind of things, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Well, Smith started writing Volthum in October 1932, but didn't finish it until February the 14th. Nice in 1933. Once he finished it, Smith didn't he basically he'd had all that debacle with the Gernsbacks about them mucking about with his story and them owing him like 600 quid and all this kind of thing, right? So he didn't want to send it to them. And a couple of the other magazines were were kind of folding or had already folded. So he's he was very limited. So he was good at so he sent it to Fods with Wright, as you would. Yeah. He didn't fancy his chances of getting it into Weird Tales, so he was incredibly pleasantly surprised when it was accepted straight off. Wow, that's unusual, isn't it? Isn't it? Especially because he's like Wright turns down the absolute Smith bangers.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Yeah, yeah. Well virtually all the Zoth Eagle stuff, right? Was was rejected.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

And the Hyperborea stuff as well. It's like I I don't get it. I really don't understand. But it was published in the September 1935 issue. So the waits are getting longer and longer. We see this with each episode, don't we? So he finished it in February 1933, but it wasn't published until September 1935. Long wait again. Yeah. And I assume payment is on publication, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would have thought so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Um, he was paid $100 for it, which back then's a lot of money. So yeah, yeah. So that was obviously sitting there in the ether for like a year and a half or whatever it was, right? Oh, it's no wonder, no wonder you had pecuniary depletion. You had Gernsback not paying him and Wright holding things back for like years. Sitting on stuff for years, yeah. But interestingly, Wright actually reserved radio broadcast rights to the story. Wow. Which is quite interesting, but unfortunately, nothing ever came of it. How cool would that be if you you know get like audit Clark Ashton Smith audio dramas, you know?

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Well, I mean, we're we're we're in a time of War of the Worlds and all that sort of thing, right? Yeah, that that was 30s, wasn't it? So, and I would imagine this was the heyday of radio drama. It was just oh yeah, that would have been the latest thing, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02 13:33

So oh yeah, it was massive there. They had all the well over here, you know, we had all the play for today and all that kind of stuff, didn't you? Those radio plays, Dick Barton, special agents, yeah, that sort of thing. All that stuff, yeah. Well, actually the serialized things, because they had all those detective things in the States, didn't they? Yes, yeah, yeah. You know, that obviously came out of the pulps. So I can see what Wright was trying to do, he was trying to get into that market, but it doesn't look like anything ever came of it, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

And and again, we often talk about adaptations. Well, radio is the perfect medium, isn't it, for at that time for this type of story. Yeah, your budget is three people and a microphone.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Well, I say hands down, the best uh adaptations of HP Lovecraft are the ones done by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre. Those audio dramas are absolutely stunning. Yeah, they're absolutely brilliant. I mean, the BBC did a couple of decent ones as well, one that wasn't too great, but a couple of good ones, full cast audio dramas. But the the HPLS ones are just oh brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So Vulthum was voted the best story of that issue of Weird Tales by readers. But oddly, Smith disagreed with them. He wasn't actually a fan of it. Uh he wrote to August Derleth on February the 19th, 1933. I've finished Vulthume, which fails to please me. I've sent it to Fonsworth Wright, but I doubt he will take it. He was wrong on that one, thankfully. But there you go. Yeah, so he wasn't a fan of the story.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Yeah, yeah. I I kind of agree with him to an extent. We've not had a bad Smith story, have we? That's the thing. No. And there are again some aspects of this that I do really like. Yeah. But it does feel overall a bit like we've we've trodden this ground before.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, it's the with the scientific fiction stories. You I guess there's only so many tropes you can use, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Alien planet, you know, take me to your leader, da-da-da-da-da. You know, and it did this does feel very similar to some of the ones that we've covered in the past.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Yes, I mean, I think seedling from Mars readily springs to mind, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was one of the Venus ones as well, where they ended up captured. Uh, because it because that is a well-worn sci-fi trope, isn't it? That you know it's Star Trek, it's Doctor Who. They end up on a planet, and this outwardly friendly people are like, Oh, yes, yes, yeah. But now you're here, you can never leave. You must live amongst us.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

You can never leave. And there's always that scene where they show them, oh, if you press this button, we'll die instantly, so don't do that. In this case, it's the the jars full of gas, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Having said that, I do like these characters now, Smith, and I have seen criticisms of this story that it's light on character. Well, that's generally the case in weird fiction across the board. It's not character-driven, it's atmosphere-driven and cosmic horror-driven and all the rest. Short story as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

I mean, how much character can you actually do in a short story?

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Well, and unless you get into that type of short story that is all about a character, which I personally find intensely dull and boring.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

You know, yeah. A bit like the the sort of book equivalent of Remains of the Day or something like that, or those Merchant Ivory films. I was taken to see one of those once by my partner at the time. And I don't think I've ever been so bored watching a movie. Would you like some tea? Oh, yes. Would you like some sugar in your tea? Oh, I don't know about that for 90 minutes, basically. You know.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Well, this is this is the argument I always have about Stephen King, right? It's horses for courses. It's horses for courses, is what you're into, isn't it? It's what type of stuff you're into. People love his character work. Whereas I'm just sitting there flicking through pages, get on with it. Like the stand where you've got some dude sitting in a bloody cafe buttering toast for like five pages. It's like, yeah, get on with it.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it can be done. It takes a good writer to pull all those elements in together, of course. But I much prefer when you see character revealed through actions.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

I I find that more interesting. And when you have that, not necessarily a character arc for that, but uh we were speaking about it recently somewhere, where you have uh quote villain or bad person, but you can kind of see why they're doing that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's that nuance, it's not just black and white, you know, it's not so clear cut.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Oh, yeah, they're the best, the best villains are the ones whose motivations are almost you know plausible, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Yeah, yeah. Which having said that, I don't really find with Valthoon, the the titular character in this story. Well, it's a god for a start, so it's beyond our understanding. But it it doesn't quite gel why it needs these two. Well, this is what I like about it. These two guys are grifters, yeah. And this seems to be a running theme in the Mars stories because we are back on that on the Mars setting, and in this one, he does do some very nice world building as well for that setting. Yeah, but these guys are a pair of down and outs, pretty much. Yeah, we get Smith having a dig here, right, in the second paragraph. His money had given out a few weeks after, and fresh supplies expected from his publisher had not yet arrived. I mean, we were just talking.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Well, he just had that debacle over at the Dweller in the Gulf with Gerns back, so that's probably exactly who he's having a pop out there.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

And Haynes, who I like to think uh his family made their money by making car manuals, is the third assistant pilot, he's not even a pilot, he's the third assistant pilot of an ether liner, and he's been he's got the sack for insubordination, so he's like a failure as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, I like this sort of drawing of the commercial metropolis of Mars, Ignarf. Um it's yeah, the port of all space traffic, it has an almost uh Star Wars kind of vibe to it, doesn't it? It's almost a bit Tatooine in the way it feels.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Yeah, it is. I I put down it's like a a sort of Middle Eastern vibe, but I guess that's what the Star Wars vibe is, isn't it? It's that kind of setting. Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

And I love this little bit here that um the month's salary paid to him at parting had been devoured with appalling swiftness by the piratic rates of the Telurian Hotel. I like that it because that again that's a great thing in sci-fi, isn't it? That you get like the the hotel, they're almost like you know, the Hilton or something, but crap.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

And uh sort of bell boy with two heads or something will pop up and but the fact that they're being ripped off like Tulurian Earth men, they're being ripped off by the earth people, the locals are perfectly fine with them. Uh in fact, the the locals kind of tolerate them, don't they? Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Well, have you ever been to a a touristy kind of place like the Canary Islands or something like that? You see, you go into the the locally owned stuff, right? And you're paying one price for the beers and things like this, and the hotels and everything, you go to the the complex, and all of a sudden you can pretty much double everything that you're you're being charged.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, it continues this world building because we have the local Martians, the I Highs. And I just wanted to read this is a a little bit of a long reading, but this is Smith at his world building best, and again his use of colour is masterful here. It was the Martian hour of worship when the I Highs gather in their roofless temples to implore the return of the passing. Sun. Like the throbbing of feverish metal pulses, a sound of ceaseless and innumerable gongs punctured the thin air. The incredibly crooked streets were almost empty, and only a few barges with immense rhomboidal sows of mauve and scarlet crawled to and fro on the waters of somber green. The light waned with visible swiftness behind the top heavy towers and pagoda-angled pyramids of Ignar Luth. It felled upon the sluggish canal like a reflection of copper on opaque enamel. The chill of the coming night began to pervade the shadows of the huge solar gnomons that line the shore at frequent intervals. The querulous clangers of the gongs died suddenly in Ignar Vath and left a weirdly whispering silence. Again, in a paragraph there, it's such an evocative picture. Sight, sound, smells, very powerful.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

I like the idea of these giant gnomons lining the beaches and things like that. So people know what time it is and all that. I I like that idea. That's something I've not seen in sci-fi before.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

Yes, yes. And it's this is where we we get a sort of cosmic element. I will say in this story, it's probably more cosmic in some senses than the other Martian stories. Because we get this idea of although the Martians and the Earth people get on well, they can never truly understand each other. More deeply than in daylight, they apprehended the muffled breathings and hidden tortuous movements of a life forever inscrutable to the children of other planets. The void between Earth and Mars had been traversed, but who could cross the evolutionary gulf between Earthman and Martian? Because this civilization was old before the founding of Lemuria. It's an incredibly ancient civilization. And you've got these two idiots kind of blundering their way.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

I'm seeing them as almost like an interplanetary Delboy and Rodney, you know. They are kind of just a pair of pair of Muppets, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03 24:14

Just the other lot were panning for gold, weren't they? I think was the uh was it the Volseio bombis? I think they're just yeah, yeah, chancing it out there for base gold.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Well, if you think about it, it's almost like California, isn't it? The gold rush, the gold rush towns, people, people, all these chances would just appear and try and make a fortune by you know striking rich, and you know, end up in all these, you know, wild west towns, which were essentially like like this kind of thing, frontier kind of things, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, yes, front frontier life in that sense, isn't it? So they're kind of bowling around, they're short of money, of course, pecuniary depletion strikes again, and they're starting to feel a little bit out of their depth, I think, when they are approached by a rather strange figure. Well, is a local that this one is nearly ten feet in height, taller by a full yard than the average eye high, but presented the familiar conformation of massively bulging chest and bony many angled limbs. The head was featured with high flaring ears and pit-like nostrils that narrowed and expanded visibly in the twilight. The eyes were sunken in profound orbits and were wholly invisible save for tiny reddish sparks that appeared to burn suspended in the sockets of a skull. So as we always say, Smith does write a good alien.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Oh, he does indeed. And we we'd be remiss not to read the next line. According to native custom, this bizarre personage was altogether nude, but a kind of circlet around the neck. A flat wire of curiously beaten silver indicated that he was the servant of some noble lord. Can't resist it, he can't they just can't help himself, can he? He's got to get a bit of filth in there.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

Well, that that is that is filth up even further in the next sentence, I think, because you've got this ten foot-two nude Martian. Haynes and Charler were astounded, for they had never before seen a Martian of such prodigious stature. Hung like a donkey. You'd be on sort of eye level, wouldn't you, if you're ten foot. There's no avoiding proper chin slapper. Oh dear. And the I high speaks to them in a weirdly booming voice, and it's basically saying to him, My master summons you, your plight is known to him, and he will help you in return for certain assistance. Come with me. And they have a bit of a discussion about this because, well, it could just be a charitable a higher prince, he says, who's got wind of our reduced circumstances, but they don't usually go out of their way to befriend terrestrials. What's this about? And and Chandler replies, I suggest we follow the guide. I thought this was great. His proposition sounds like the first chapter of a thriller.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Yeah, I liked that. I I do love the fact again, we brought this up several times when discussing Smith's interplanetary stories. I like the fact that these are basically spacefaring chaps in their delivery. It's very come along, uh chap, you know.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Uh yeah, and it's basically this is take me to your leader, isn't it? Yeah. Well, he turns out to be the biggest leader around. Indeed. But this stuff gives Smith the opportunity to go into further excellent description, uh, almost a Lovecraftian scale of architecture description here, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Oh, yeah, definitely. We get we get his brilliant use of light again, because as they go through in the mansions and warehouses with broad balconies and jutting roofs and all this, you've got the sort of a purplish, the greenish purple gloom of night, and then you get the saffron of the sunset and all this. He he he paints pictures in very broad strokes with colours, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yes, yes, and the light they get from the bosses of radioactive minerals set in the walls and roof of a circular antechamber. So this put me in mind of Robert Howard and Zuthal, the Slytherin Shadow, where light was they they rubbed a stone on the wall and it gave off light. And this is obviously um a common thing with these writers at the time. This was light from radioactive material because they didn't quite know, I suppose, yet what I do to you. No, and I also like as it turns out the tech here, they get into this chamber that is basically a lift, and everything is happening without the I high their guide doing anything, but it turns out he is they work out his speaking, but is speaking in such a high frequency they can't hear it. But that's what's activating the door and the light and the lifts and everything. I thought that was a nice little mechanism, that yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Yeah, use of ultrasonics and things like that. Again, it's quite novel. So that's it, even even when Smith is kind of retreading old ground, he still finds a way of making it unique, which I think is a testament to how good of a writer he is, you know. Because it'd be easy just to essentially just remix an old story, but there's always something else that you can add into it to give some interest.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

Totally, yeah. And I mean he could have just had they they come in, the the guy presses a button on the wall and down the lift goes, right? But yeah, that's that extra detail gives it a uh a nice layer. And this is another version, I think, of Smith's journey. The the Smithian trip from place A to place B. Not quite to a distant star in this case, though it is uh a long journey. They are going down into the depths, which of course calls to mind the dweller in the gulf, you know. Yeah, and if if they read that story, well, they're already quite nervous. I think that would make them even more nervous, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Would indeed. Yeah, a Smithian trip. I like that. Yeah. Singing flame, isn't it? I can see it, man, I can see the singing flame.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

And we get a ceaseless grating and shrieking of metal from this machinery, which must be incredibly old. Like a narrowing cluster of yellow stars, the lights grew dim and small above them. Still their descent continued, and they could no longer discern each other's faces, or the face of the Aye High in the ebb and blackness through which they fell. Where are you taking us? said Haynes bluntly. Does your master live underground? We go to my master, replied the Martian, with cryptic finality. He awaits you. Nice. Again, you've got like, you know, querulous gongs and cryptic finality, all those little phrases peppered throughout. And this is where it kind of put me in mind of Colossus of Elon, this next scene, because in effect we we come down into well, it's the Martian Hades, isn't it? It's the Martian hill.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Yeah, the underworld, literally and figuratively, I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

And it even looks like our hill because we've got a great cavern lit by crimson hemispheres embedded in the roof. So we've got very much that ruddy glow. This is full of machinery. Uh it kind of gets a bit steampunk at times, this story as well, I think. Yeah, it's quite Jules Verne.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. One thing I I want to bring notice to here is where we talk about a lot of his use of colour and things like that. But this one is got a lot of sound. There's a lot of mentions of sound because you've got the high-pitched speech of the thing, you've got high-pitched whines and susurations, strident shrieking of metal, and then you've we've got the repeated mention of strange muted clangers and thunder-like rumblings. So you get this very mechanized thing, you know, and that that is a quite a common depiction of hell, isn't it? As a giant sort of factory.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

It is. This is like the uh industrial nightmare, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yeah, dark satanic mill. There we go.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Marvelous. And Chandler says, This sounds like that place from the older Ahai myths, Ravormos, the Martian underworld, where Volthum, the evil god, is supposed to lie asleep for a thousand years amid his worshippers. And the guy says, Yep. Oh, you've heard you've heard of that.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah. Yeah, I like how casual it is. Yeah, you've come to Ravornus, he boomed portentously. Volthum is awake and will not sleep again for another thousand years. It is he that has summoned you, and I take you now to the chamber of audience.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Oh shit. But this is where Haynes steps up to deliver our rational opposition to this idea, as of course we always get. Uh, let's totally ignore the ten foot yokel knowledge guy and say, uh, no, no, Volthum, it's all superstition, like Satan. The up-to-date Martians don't believe in him nowadays, though I have heard there's still a sort of devil cult among the pariahs and low castes. I'll wager that some noble is trying to stage a revolution against the reigning Emperor Psychor and has established his quarters underground. Okay, there's there's a few interesting things there. Again, a lot of world building packs into just a few lines. This idea of the modern Martians who don't believe all that old superstitious nonsense. So this is just like the humans, really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, I like Chandler's response to this. That sounds reasonable. A revolutionist might call himself Vulthum. The trick would be true to the I High psychology. They have a taste for high-sounding metaphors and fantastic titles, but that actually plays in because you you've had that throughout history, haven't you? Of like revolutionaries and just you know, people giving themselves these biblical names or yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

So again, this is this is Smith using the sci-fi to have a pop at modern-day humans, isn't it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And all of the Martians down here are of larger than normal stature. None of them are less than nine or ten feet high, some are closer to eleven, and all are muscled in proportion. Their faces bore a look of immense mummy-like age, incongruous with their agility and vigour. They seemed oblivious of the Earthmen, their deeply shadowed eyes preoccupied with some ulterior vision. So this is a very busy place. And I like this mummy-like you get a couple of little hints here and there of that Egypt Mars connection that he he draws on quite a lot, I think.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah, I I got that as well. Something I want to just jump on here was a word pretermal. Now I don't think I've ever seen that. Yeah. And I again, it's another word that I tend to overuse to in an attempt to look clever.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

But preta normal, uh it's uh yeah, cool. And again, very nice description of this uh landscape or this scenery they're going through until they arrive in a chamber that is small but lofty, its roof rising like the interior of a spire. Its floor and walls were stained by the bloody violet beams of a single hemisphere orb far up in the narrowing dome. The place was vacant and furnished only with a curious tripod of black metal fixed in the centre of the floor. The tripod bore an oval block of crystal, and from this block, as if from a frozen pool, a frozen flower lifted, opening petals of smooth, heavy ivory that received a rosy tinge from the strange lights. Block, flower, tripod, it seemed, were the parts of a piece of sculpture. So this now had the feeling to me this is some sort of uh temple room, or it's uh everything outside seems very mechanical and practical, but we're we're heading into a different area now.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah, something I uh I don't know why, but it it sort of reminds me of the city of Yith a little bit. With all this with the beams, the tripod, and all that kind of thing. But it it's um whereas uh Lovecraft based most of his horrors on sea creatures, Smith tends to go for flowers a lot. We see like flowers being used as monsters for want of a better term, quite often in Smith's work.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

It's interesting because yeah, I I never thought of it in those terms. Lovecraft sea creatures, Smith plants, powered oversized animals, reptiles, giant snake, giant spider, giant uh ape kind of thing. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

I suppose for for two gum bob down in Texas, bloody snakes and spiders, but everywhere, right?

SPEAKER_03 37:54

Yeah, I I think he had a bit of a phobia of snakes or a fear of snakes, I think. So they they do crop up quite a bit, and you know, sword and sorcery is not sword and sorcery without a giant spider, is it? No, it's not, it's the law. Uh and then they all mix that in with a dash of tentacle, right? Or oleaginous squamous blob.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Robert Chambers and his poppy grave worms.

SPEAKER_03 38:23

So they're they're standing around looking at this flower, they feel that they're being watched, their guide leaves them on their own, and then this voice speaks. And this to me was just pure Star Trek. Again, I can hear that voice. I am the entity known as Voltoon. Yeah, and heavy reverb. Yes, tons of reverb. Whack up the reverb. We're back to our surf thing, right? Yeah, yeah. And I I would be so surprised if Gene Roddenbury uh never read Smith really would.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Also, for some bizarre reason, he brought to mind the Wizard of Oz for me for some reason. Oh, yeah, oh that's good, yeah, yeah. I I got real Wizard of Oz vibes, you know, the man behind the curtain and all that kind of business going on.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

Yes, yes. And Voltoom begins his pitch, his, her, their pitch, in the way that you know this is the villain. Uh, because it's like, oh, you'll have heard all those bad stories about me. Yeah, that's just all myth and nonsense and superstition. I'm not evil at all.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Yeah, I like his opening, I like one of his opening lines here. At a time when your ancestors were still the blood brothers of the ape. That's nice. That's nice. I like that. That's a nice line.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

And what Vol Thum reveals is that I am neither god nor demon, but a being who came to Mars from another universe in former cycles. My span of life is far longer than that of any creatures evolved by worlds of your solar system. I am governed by alien biologic laws, with periods of alternate slumber and wakefulness that involve centuries. It is virtually true as the Ahais believe that I sleep for a thousand years and remain conscious continually for another thousand. Now that might remind us of another so-called god, one who sleeps on earth, under the sea, under the Pacific, to be specific. Oh, actually what I did there.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Yes, indeed. Indeed. But also, yeah, I mean, there is definite echoes of that, of the the the mythos, I guess you'd say, because the Martians say that I fell from heaven like a fiery meteor, and the myth interprets the descent of my ethoship. So that's that whole thing, isn't it? That science is seen as magic or something supernatural, but it's the science to these otherworldly things, right? Beyond our comprehension, darling.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

Well, yeah, yeah, we're into pure Eric von Daneken here, aren't we? Chariots of the gods and all that sort of stuff, and your cargo cults and everything else. And again, totally Love Craftian. Uh, in fact, to the extent that Lynn Carter once suggested that as an intercosmic exile banished by implacable foes, Volthoom should be added to the pantheon of the Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos. Yeah. So is is pitching to put Volthoom in the Hall of Mythos fame.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Nice. I think I have seen it listed, you know.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Like I said, I've got a list somewhere of Smith's Lovecraft, Smith's mythos stuff, the Smithhos. The Smithos, yes. Uh, and I think Volthum is always listed, so people obviously listen to Mr. Carter, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Oh, I forgot to mention as well when they were in where this room they're in has got the the Stone Flower in it, right? Uh Stone Flower is a great Santana track off the Caravanserai album, which uh again Caravanserai, and even the cover of that album is quite Smithian in some ways, I think.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Great stuff.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

So we get Voltoom's kind of backstory, and it's the usual thing. Worshipped as a god, takes over the planet, uh, but has this uh unfortunate life cycle of awake for a thousand years, asleep for a thousand years, and is kind of converting his adepts and his followers uh in into the the they they now match his sort of sleep cycle. He basically is drugging them, isn't he?

SPEAKER_02 42:35

For want of a better term. Also, I have many other gifts, the precious gems and metals that you prize so highly. Also, there are the flowers whose perfume is more seductive and persuasive than all else. Inhaling that perfume, you will deem that even gold is worthless in comparison. And having breathed it, you and all others of your kind will serve me gladly.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

There you go. So get them hooked on the stuff, right? And whether that is like um it becomes an addiction for them or whether it just lowers their resistance, you know. Either way, it's the same result. They're in his thrall.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Interplanetary drug pusher. Sniff the narcotic flowers, you know you want to.

SPEAKER_03 43:24

It's a big poppy, basically, isn't he?

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

And we have uh I think another parallel with the big C here. I am the possessor of many senses and faculties unknown to you or to the Martians. My perceptions at will can be extended over large areas of space or even time. So although he's sleeping, he's active, is at the very least, monitoring things and seeing what is going on. And you imagine on some level he's able to manipulate events as well.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, it is like the big C, you know, sending out his dreams. Dreams to manipulate and all that kind of stuff and draw people in and all that kind of business.

SPEAKER_03 44:06

All that good cosmic horror stuff. Yes. And um as he finishes, it is spoken about this wonderful perfume. The voice ended, leaving a vibration that thrilled the nerves of the listeners for some moments. It was like the cessation of a sweet bewitching music with overtones of evil scarcely to be detected above the subtle melody. It bemused the senses of Haynes and Chandler, lulling their astonishment into a sort of dreamy acceptance. So even the voice has got that uh Saruman sort of lure about it. Um they've not even smelt the perfume there, and and that they're they're halfway gone already.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Yeah, again, you get the echo of Greek myth, don't you? Because the sirens and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Uh and this is where that flower in front of them turns out it's not a work of sculpture, but an anthalite or fossil blossom from his own world, and now they get hit with the perfume. And here comes the trip, right? Here comes another trip.

SPEAKER_04 45:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

I feel we should have a sitar playing in the background for this.

SPEAKER_04 45:18

Oh definitely.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Haynes was no part of this scene, but had disappeared from his ken, and the roof and walls had vanished, giving place to an open forest of fern like trees. Their slim pearly bowls and tender frondage swam in a luminous glory, like an Eden filled with the primal daybreak. The trees were tall, but taller still than they were the flowers that poured down from waving sensors of carnal white, an overwhelming and voluptuous perfume. Chandler felt an indescribable ecstasy. I bet he did. Yeah, indeed. And can I just give a shout out there to uh another person who appeared in a lot of films with Poddy Fronds and all the rest, Pearly Bowls. Pearly Bowls, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Nice, I like that.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

Marvelous, marvelous accent. And I guess I think, like you said, it's it's that sound quality. Yes, we've got the colours and the scents and everything else, but there's a singing as well, coming from the flowers, from the mouths of the blossoms, a singing as of houris that turned his blood to a golden filter brew. It rose in giddying rapture, insuppressible, and he thought that the very flowers soared like flames, and the trees aspired towards them, and he himself was a blown fire that towered with the singing to attain some ultimate pinnacle of delight.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

Yeah, I can't help thinking of 60s sci-fi. You know, the long tracking shot of the alien planet or whatever, and you've always got on the soundtrack, haven't you? That sort of thing going on, right? It's that yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:59

But again, that's as you say, that siren, that siren-esque aspect to it. Yeah, and there are words under it, and I almost imagine this like a whisper. It's like a I am Volthoom and thou art mine from the beginning of worlds and shall be mine until the end. Look into the eyes, look into the eyes, not around the eyes, look, you're going under. You are feeling sleepy.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's very insidious, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 47:29

And he wakes up on a bed. Well, a bed of curling grass, the colour of verdantique, with enormous tiger-hued blossoms leaning about him, as Haynes as there next to him, has already woken up. He describes it as the horticultural annex of Ravor Moss. Little annexes. It's nice that Hell's got all these little departments, isn't it? Gardening, yeah. Just turn left for gardening for the horticultural department in the basement, men's underwear. Yeah. And they start talking about this offer. Basically, the offer is you're going to be my ambassadors to Earth, you introduce me. In return, you get all the good stuff. I take over the world. Everyone's a winner. They're not too sure about this, are they? No. And I like this idea as well. This is perhaps of its time. They've just had this mind-blasting trip, this cosmic trip. And they describe it as they they were introduced to an alien drug that was no less powerful than morphine, cocaine, or marijuana, and in all likelihood, no less pernicious. Nice. That's how it was a down sight more powerful than any of those.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

Reefer madness. Well, this is sort of where the penny drops, isn't it? They realize that despite how well they've been treated so far, that they are essentially prisoners. Because Chandler's like, what if we refuse? And the answer is Volthoom said it would be impossible to let us return in that case. But he didn't specify our fate, merely hinted that it would be an unpleasant one. Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

Oh, you dread to think. Yeah. They're brought food and drink by uh uh an Ahai, and that attendant tells them, you can roam around, you can have a look through the caverns, you can go on your own, or I can serve you as a guide. My name is Tar Volsai, and I am ready to answer any question that you ask. Also, you may dismiss me at will. So they accept his offer and he starts giving them the guided tour basically. And again, we get lots of lovely description of the garden and passageways and machinery and storage vats, ingots of precious and semi-precious metals. But we then also get this room he takes them in that has got the three great bottles of clear uncoloured glass, having somewhat the form of Roman amphorae. And when Charler asks, What are these? he says, Oh, those are the bottles of sleep. If you open those, we all go to sleep. So it's why would you tell them that? Or do they think that these creatures are so beneath them that it doesn't matter?

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Yeah, yeah, very possible. Well, yeah, I'm glad you picked up on the Egypt earlier, because you've got obviously this bit there, there. But just a little bit above it, they climbed a flight of stairs going up to that room, colossal as the steps of the pyramid of Cheops. So, yeah, pyramids of Mars and all that. Well, that's another another Doctor Who reference, but we're getting plenty of them today.

SPEAKER_03 50:44

They're then taken towards this sound they hear, rumbling and pounding as of innumerable engines came to meet them. The sound broke on them like a Niagara of evil thunders when they emerged finally in the sort of pillared gallery that surrounded a mile-wide gulf illumined by the terrible flaring of tongued fires that rose incessantly from its depths. Now that's hell, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. I mean, it even describes it as you know the infernal circle of angry light and tortured shadow. That's a great phrase. Angry light and tortured shadow.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Great phrase.

SPEAKER_03 51:21

And they're building something. So this this again threw me back to the Colossus of Elon. But what they're building is the ether ship. And uh again, that nice idea that was prevalent at that time that space is full of this ether that that's what you go through, like on a boat through water. And this is what is gonna go to Earth, it's gonna blast its way to the surface by means of atomic disintegrators, and then it's gonna head for Earth. And here again, the guide makes another little bit of a mistake. Well, perhaps, because Chandler asks, Well, what's beyond this gulf? And he talks about an old sort of sunken, dried-up riverbed that runs for miles below sea level, but eventually comes out on the surface. Oh, that's a handy way out, isn't it? But I do like that they bring this up, obviously. Oh, it looks like there's a way out there. But I think it's Haynes says, Yeah, sounds a bit too easy, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_04 52:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

Nonetheless, that's what they decide to do. They're gonna try and make their escape. Uh, luckily, Haynes has got a small pocket flash, that's handy. This mile-wide golf and this huge yawning abyss beyond it, and he's got one of those little five-pound torches.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

I'm surprised he hasn't got like uh as we've seen in stories such as this before, you know, some sandwiches and a revolver. That seems to be the standard kit for these kind of chaps, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 52:49

Uh, so yeah, they make their way through now. This now turns into like a DD adventure, right? Yeah, because they're making these way through these caverns and everything else. When they come to the fungus cave. Nice. The the fungus is a particular shape. This was quite funny. High up on some of the beaches, there were singular formations resembling a type of mammoth fungi grown in caverns beneath the modern canals. These formations in the shape of Herculean clubs arose often to a height of three feet or more, and they decide to break a couple off to arm themselves. Yeah, fungal club.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

I like that. I'm stealing that. I am gonna do a fungal club mix of one of my tracks. Oh, that's brilliant. Fungal club mix. I like that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

Oh, we get a little mention of the Sumerian channel as well. Obviously, it's pitch black down here. I mean, I know Sumerian is used uh for darkness, but you know, also like to think that's a little nod to REH.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Now I've got Rosetta Stone in my head. They did a song called Sumerian. Absolute goth rock banger.

SPEAKER_03 54:04

And they perceive a light at the end of the tunnel. Alas, it's uh a train coming towards them, isn't it? It's pretty much it's not the outside because as they grow near it, the light grows and the voice comes. It's Volfoon. Go back as you came, O earthlings. None may leave Ravormos without my knowledge or against my will. Behold, I have sent my guardians to escort you. And uh we get a couple of creatures that we've not seen before on Mars.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

I love this. This is where because I was kind of thinking so far, we've had, you know, some quite interesting looking creatures, but nothing up to Smith's standard, so to speak. These, wow. They rose from the rocky bottom to the height of giraffes, with shortish legs that were vaguely similar to those of Chinese dragons, and elongated spiral necks like the middle coils of great anacondas. Their heads were triple faced, and they might have been the tri of some effernal world. It seemed that each face was eyeless, with tongue-shapened flames issuing voluminously from deep orbits beneath the slanted brows. Flames also poured in a ceaseless vomit from the gaping gargoyle mouths. From the head of each monster a triple comb of vermilion flared aloft in sharp serrations, glowing terribly, and both of them were bearded with crimson scrolls. Their necks and arching spines were fringed with sword-long blades that diminished into rows of daggers on the tapering tails, and their whole bodies, as well as this fearsome armament, appeared to burn and smolder as if they had just issued from a fiery furnace. It just keeps building and building and building and getting weirder and weirder and weirder, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03 56:07

It does, it's it's marvellous, isn't it? That that's like yeah, uh a combination of five different monsters and they're on fire as well. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

There's the cherry on it, and they've got swords on them.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

They can feel the heat, and I like that about vomiting flame, you know.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Again, it is very demonic, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 56:29

It's very old testament almost. Yeah, yeah, it's like a Leviathan kind of thing, isn't it? Or the the beast, you know, the great beast. Yeah, and uh again we get the two different reactions. My god, these monsters are supernatural, cried Chandler, shaken and appalled. Haynes, the rationalist, was inclined to a more orthodox explanation. Hmm, puffing on his pipe, perhaps. There must be some sort of television behind this. Though I can't imagine how it's possible to project three-dimensional images and also create the sensation of heat. It's still going for the rational explanation, even having been down here for a while and been through this whole infernal complex.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

I like that mention of television because television was in its real infancy at this point. I mean, they hadn't even, I think it was was it a couple of years shy of this that they started experimenting with the cathode ray? But it was a disc projection system, wasn't it, at this point?

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Right. I I don't know. I don't know. I know that the the first transmission in the UK was from Ali Pali, wasn't it? It was indeed, yes. Which I think was the 30s, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Yeah, I've got here the first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-varying signal that could be reconstructed at a receiver back into an approximation of the original image. Yeah. So yeah, television was really in its infancy. They were sort of mucking about with it at this point to try in various different ways of getting it done.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

So that's a quite interesting snapshot of the era, really. Yeah, well, even now, that's a common sci-fi trope. Or Star Wars has got it right, your holographic projection. Oh, yeah. Or with the chess match, wasn't it? That that was one on board the uh on board the ship. Do you have a player? There's like a 3D holographic chess going on. Yes. And it's a common thing you you sort of see. Yeah, so this is Smith sort of ahead of his time, and again, just how many people did these stories influence? Anyway, Haynes Haynes is a man after my own heart. If there's something big and scary in front of you, you throw a rocket hit. Whack at it with a fungal club. Although he aimed unerringly, he's obviously done that before, the fragments struck the frontal brow of the monster and seemed to explode in a shower of sparks at the moment of impact. The creature flared and swirled prodigiously, and a fiery hissing became audible. This actually drives them back. So maybe not a TV projection. No. And more of these things turn up as as they start to flee. They're sort of driven back to that large outer hall. They come back into the gallery, and I love this. The two behind continue to advance toward them with a hissing as of satanic salamanders. Band name, possibly. The satanic salamanders. Yeah. Psychobilly band. Oh, yes, yes. Gotta be a psychobilly band.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

Gotta be, yeah. Yeah. Vincent Volthoom and the Satanic Salamanders.

SPEAKER_03 59:55

Oh, oh, I'm I'm uh I'm buying the dot com on that straight away. Brilliant. St. Volfoom. Brilliant. And the satanic salamanders. The the chimeras, as they call them, the monsters that are driving them, start to change. The flaming bodies dulled and shrank and darkened. The heat lessened. The fires died down in the mouths and eye pits. At the same time, the creatures drew closer, fawning loathsomely and revealing whitish tongues and eyeball of jet. The tongues seemed to divide. They grew paler. They were flower petals that Haines and Chana had seen somewhere at a former time. The breath of the chimeras, like a soft gowl, was upon the faces of the earthmen, and their breath was a cool and spicy perfume that they had known before. The narcotic perfume that had overcome them following their audience with the hidden master of a Ravormos. So these beasties are actually flowers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

And of course, in less weird tales pulp fiction fashion, they pass out.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

Drugged again.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:17

Off on another voyage to Trip Out City.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

Trip in the light, fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

There we go.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

Haynes wakes up, he's on his own. Chandler has vanished. They seem to have left him there. They've left his club as well, which is quite handy. Again, another fatal mistake. So he goes off in search of his friends. And I actually I thought this was seen quite this scene was quite nice because he sees sees Chandler coming towards him and hears his voice. Hello, Bob. This is my first televisual appearance in tri-dimensional form. Pretty good, isn't it? I'm in the private lab of Volthun. Hey, he's a great guy. You should do what he says.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

Not suspicious at all. And he's sort of playing on his avarice as well, isn't it? This uh suspicious apparition. You know, as soon as you've made up to do your mind to do likewise, we'll return to Ignar with full instructions regarding our terrestrial mission and funds amounting to a million dollars each. Um one million dollars. Oh, you beat me to it. I was just gonna do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:23

And I thought it was it was interesting that he appeals to his greed, the pecuniary angle there, but also to the fact that, yeah, you were right. I am a televisual projection. Hey, you were right about that. So that's a kind of appeal to the ego as well, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

Yeah, yeah. It is very devilish, isn't it? Is is we're in full-on trickster, devil, demon territory here now.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

But it is not really buying this. No. And uh it remembers the glass jars now, and is is another club on a Saturday night, uh, still carrying the Mineraloid Club. The mineraloid club is Saturday night. That's more uh sort of electronic dance, I think. The mineraloid club. Yeah, yeah. And he's set his mind on smashing the bottles. He's got no doubt that he and Chandler will also, of course, be overcome by these fumes and will fall into a sleep. Uh, and they're not gonna wake up because they're gonna sleep for a thousand years, so they're just gonna start dehydration, whatever, they're gonna die in their sleep, but you know, worse ways to go, I suppose. Yeah, but it will not kill Voltoom and the others, but it will put them down for a thousand years, kicking the can down the road.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Yeah, because you're just worried about obviously the projected invasion of Earth and the spread of the narcotic flower and all this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:55

So, you know, it's for the for the greater good, yeah. And when the when the ether ship rises up through the surface, it's gonna destroy Ignarth above it. Yeah, so you know, hundreds, thousands, millions of people are gonna be killed in that as well. So, yeah, smashy smashy, gassy gassy, and um it this is like all the alarms going off, right? All the bells are ringing and the a high are running around trying to sort of stop him. It's too late. I like this as well. At the second blow, it broke inward with a shrill, appalling sound that was almost an articulate shriek. And Haynes' face was fanned for an instant by a cool breath, gentle as a woman's sigh. Can't help himself, can he? A voice of thunder seemed to fill the room with straight back into Star Trek here. Fool, you have doomed yourself and your fellow Earthman by this deed. A tomb-like silence followed, and the far-off muted rumble of engineeries seemed to ebb and recede before it. He doesn't know how much time he's got before this gas takes effect, so like everyone else in the place, he just starts running around. I get this weird levitation scene as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:10

Yeah. It's almost like a tractor beam, innit? You know.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:14

Yeah, yeah. This is the reveal now of Volthum itself.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:19

Again, another quiet trippy trip. He's he's going through all these other chambers with masses of unnamable machines. Then it's suddenly deposited on his feet. Haynes beheld the form of Chandler lashed upright with metal cords to a rack like frame. Near him, in a still and standing posture, was the giant Tarbul Shy, and immediately in front of him there reclined an incredible thing, whose further portions and members wound away to an indefinite distance amid the thronged machinery. This is Volthum now, who's basically uh a big plant. I kind of picture it as a big sort of Venus flytrap. Oh, it it's Feed me, isn't it? Little shop of horrors. Was it Audrey? It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:06

Audrey. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't seeing it like that because the description, you know, gigantic plant with innumerable roots, pale and swollen. I was seeing it more. Do you do you remember the Tom Baker doctor who the seeds of death? The crinoid above the manor house. The great big blobby plant monster. It's a trifid, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:27

Yeah. So you you could have that, and that would be good. That's creepy enough. But Smithia ramps it up again. I I really like this. Because this mass is topped with a vermilion cup like a monstrous blossom. And from the cup there grew an elfin figure, pearly hued and formed with exquisite beauty and symmetry. A figure that turned its Liliputian face towards Haines and spoke in the sounding voice of Voltum. You have conquered for the time, but I bear no rancor toward you. I blame my own carelessness. So maybe that is what sustains Volthoon, but the actual being itself is this quite small, almost like a fairy type figure. It is. Yeah. It's like a flower fairy. Yeah. Kind of thing. That's really weird, isn't it? That's that's that's more creepy than just having a big giant plant, I think. Oh yeah. Chandler confirms, yeah, that wasn't me. I've been strapped to this metal frame that they've been torturing me. That that was just a projection. And like they start to feel drowsy now.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

Yeah, Volthum's kind of just accepting it, isn't it? We shall all sleep soundly, and a thousand years and no more than a single night to my followers and me. For you, whose life term is so brief, they will become eternity. Soon I shall awaken and resume my plans of conquest, and you who dare to interfere, will lie beside me then as a little dust, and the dust will be swept away.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:58

That's a brilliant line. I love that. That's great, that's great, isn't it? Again, there's that cosmic aspect, right? Yeah. Insignificant specks of dust, you know. And that actually reminds me there was a vampire film that we watched years ago, and it was one of those films that we really enjoyed but can't remember the title of it. So let me put this out there to see if anyone recognises this. There was a couple, I think they were due to get married or were married, and the vampire was trying to seduce the woman away from the man. And one line the vampire says was, I'm gonna turn her into a vampire, and we're gonna come and see you in 80 years' time and look at your little dried-up dead face and laugh. I thought that was quite chilling. That's brilliant. And I can't remember, you know. If anyone does know that, then please do let me know. And yeah, everyone starts to go sleepy by as the elf in being begins to nod in the monstrous vermilion club. Haynes and Charler saw each other with growing, wavering dimness, as though a grey mist had risen between them. Charler relaxed on the torture frame and his eyelids drooped. Haynes tottered, fell, and lay motionless. Tarvalshire, still clutching his sinister instrument, reposed like a mummy giant. Slumber like a silent sea had filled the caverns of Ravormos.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Are you still clutching your sinister instrument, sir?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:29

I never put it down. If I do put it down, there's only trouble, so I always keep it to hand. Sinister and Dexter, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:42

Yeah, very good. Nice. Another cracking little story. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:47

I I I do it it does suffer from those uh as we said, those previous tropes that he's used. But there's some there's some really great writing in there, the description in particular.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:59

Yeah, I think of those stories, if we were to put them all in a list, that would rank one of the best of those types of story.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:08

Yeah, I I think it suffers in comparison next to Yo Bombis and the Dweller in the Gulf, which are so intense. This one feels a little more. I I suppose it's intense in a way, but you're dealing with a god. This is always a difficult guy. I think the same with Lovecraft sometimes, you're dealing with something that's so overwhelming, it's almost beyond horror. Whereas the thing that drops on your head and puts spikes into your brain and takes you over, or you you can relate to that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, as seems usual with these later stories, there's very little mention in the letters. Of course, we're referring here to Stormwood Spire Lonely Hill, the letters of Lovecraft and Smith 1922-31. But we do get uh a slightly longer mention of Vol Thune, and of course, as always, dear listener, it gives us a chance to read out a return address.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:06

Marvellous.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:07

So here we go. This is Lovecraft, dated 5th of December 1932. Desert city of Gehim, hour of the rearing of the sand burrowers. Dear Clark Ashton. Nice What you say of Volfoom arouses my keenest expectations, especially in view of the graphic pictorial glimpse of that malign entity. Thanks infinitely for that sketch and for the accompanying view of the less classifiable entity. Someday I hope you'll be able to resume painting on a larger scale and produce more of those lunar, Saturnian and transgalactic landscapes, whose alien contours and monstrous vegetation strike such a mortal chill to the soul. My gradually accumulated collection of grotesque heads and cognate horrors is a zealously cherished one. And the few to whom I have lent it at various times concur with me in admiration.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:06

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:08

So Smith obviously did a drawing or a painting of Volthoom at some point. We'll see if we can track that down and put that up on the uh on the episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

I want to know what his other drawing was.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:21

Unclassifiable. Yeah, a less classifiable entity. Uh yeah. Uh oh, by the way, I think I did see that Niels has put up something about Smith's art from the January conference. Oh, nice. I'll I'll put a link up to that in the show notes below. Does anyone know is there an online collection of Smith's work? Uh for example, there's a website that has every known photo of Lovecraft on it. Yeah. I just wondered if if there was something along the same lines that shows Smith's work, his sculptures and his paintings.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:55

I don't know. I've I've seen lists of all these sculptures and things. So I assume them might be somewhere. We'll have to do some digging.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:05

Yes, yes, I'll I'm sure someone out there can let us know as well. Uh do get in touch. Speaking of which, shall we have a delve in into our Saturnine mailbag? Can a mailbag be saturnine? I don't know. I don't know. I think a bulbous.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

I think I I like yeah, bulbous sack.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:26

You can touch it first.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Right show.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

Yes, we've had some missives in about episode 16, The Voyage of Uvoren, and we start on Patreon with Casa Torvald because we mentioned owls. There was an owl featured in that story. Yeah, yeah. And I brought up the mechanical owl that I remembered from a Harryhausen film. And Casa writes, the mechanical owl was in Clash of the Titans. Its name was Bubo, which is strangely the Latin word for owl. I didn't know that. No, I didn't. I didn't know. So why do why do they call those things that grow in the plague bubos? I wonder, there's sounds like there's a story there, doesn't it? Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

Well, continuing on that theme over on YouTube, Rambam3000 says the mechanical owl is from Clash of the Titans. In addition, Arak is a Levantine spirit traditionally made from grapes and aniseed.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

I can't stand the taste of aniseeds. Oh, I like aniseed. I want to give that a go. Also on YouTube, Clay Story Sculptor writes, another cracking story from CAS. Often, my first thought when this one comes up is it's the funny one with the bird crown on the arsehole king. Nice. Agreed. It does feel a bit out of place in Zoth Eek's dark mood, although the humour is pretty dark. Nice one, guys. Keep on keeping on. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I I quite agree. A bird crown on the arsehole king. Was there was there ever a king who wasn't an arsehole? Perhaps I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:11

Maybe that maybe jumping over to the Innsmouth Forum now. Alter writes, Thank you for another wonderful episode. You mentioned the successive scenes of increasing strangeness. The voyage of kings, I know you're a van Euroven, reminds me a lot of the Seven Gaiuses. In this latest story, we encounter increasingly fantastical creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos. Gentlemen, as always, wonderful work, and it's a pleasure to listen to you. P.S. My adventure with good friends of Jackson Elias began with the episode about the seven geeses and the second one about the Clark Ashton cycle, Clarkashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos fiction. Good times. I love the seven geases. I absolutely adore that story.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:59

Yeah. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah. Thanks, Alta, for that. And yeah, I do remember that episode of the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast for the Seven Gaiases. That's uh that's one well worth listening to. Well, they're all well worth listening to, but yeah, that that was a particularly good episode, I thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:16

I'm assuming, yeah, the Klockeston cycle, that's sitting on my shelf over there. It's the Chaossian book.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:21

Yes, yes. And finally, we have an email from our friend Mark Griffin of the 30 plus minutes with HPL Podcast. Greetings from the land mass untouched by the mysterious fog. With names like Boobies and Tit, ornithologists definitely had other things on their mind than birds. Because of my surname, I'm especially drawn to the voyage of King Uvoran. The short story is one of the few to mention those magnificent creatures that are half eagle, half lion, and all badass. Griffins. While one can't swing a dead cat without hitting tales of vampires and werewolves, so few stories feature these magnificent creatures. The only known story to feature them outright is The House of the Griffin by Will Garth, which appeared in Strange Stories October 1939. The tale was promising, but disappointing in the end. Mandeville's Travels reports a kingdom of Griffins that haven't been found by anyone else. Though not in the novel, Griffins fought for Aslan in the 2005 film version, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Getting to see some Griffin action was exciting, steady now. They were probably selected because a few legends state they guarded the tomb of Christ. They like to guard a lot of tombs, especially if treasure is within.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:48

The movies Griffin in Summer and Griffin and Phoenix, and the novel Killing Mr. Griffin, are all misleading because no mythical creatures make an appearance. I especially object to anything asking for my death. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azgaban has hippogriffs, but they are not the same. Though I wouldn't turn one away if offered such a beast, it would be an adequate consolation prize. Because of the scarcity of griffins in fiction and film, I cherish them all when they do appear, even if the plots are lacking. I even rewrote The House of the Griffin to my liking. Jumping to a different subject. A faux par occurred in the last episode. The Golden Owl didn't appear in the Seventh Voyage of Simbad. The owl named Bubo was a character in another Ray Harryhausen flick, Clash of the Titans, who served as a magical guide to Perseus. The remake in 2010 only had Bubo as a cameo, which is one of the many reasons why that version is not as enduring to the public as the original. Keep on spreading the gospel of Sarthugua, your disobedient servant, Mark.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

Marvelous. Thank you very much, Mark, for that uh educational, informative and entertaining history of griffins in literature. That's that's great. Well, you could do a whole other podcast based on that, couldn't you? All these various monsters, as Mark says, obviously, vampires and werewolves are ten a penny. But it would be interesting to delve into some of the more obscure creatures, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:21

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And yes, I fully um I'd like to say that the Clash of the Titans remake was utter, utter bobbins. I don't know about it being less well remembered. I thought it was absolutely awful.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:35

I I vaguely remember it, which is a you usually a sign I didn't enjoy it. Whereas all those earlier Harry Housen films, whether it's the Sinbad ones or obviously Jason and all the rest, I I almost know those scene for scene, but yeah, that the last Clash of the Titans, yeah, 2010, was it that long ago? Wow. Bloody L. Yeah. Yeah, quite quite unmemorable, really. Well, thank you very much for those folks, and thanks for the corrections as well. We we stand to be corrected on pretty much everything here, and that's uh that's a nice excuse, maybe, to go and watch Clash of the Titans and the seventh voyage of Sinbad again this weekend. Uh I don't know if you find this, uh, but we've got Amazon, Netflix, Google, Channel 4, ITV, uh now, you know, and I'll sit there for 45 minutes sometimes trying to find a bloody film to watch.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

Oh, you sp yeah, by the time by the time you find something, it's time to go to bed. Yeah, yeah, I get that a lot. I get that a lot. The other thing I get is I have these ideas, oh, I really want to watch this or that or something or the other, and it's always on a sodding streaming platform that I don't currently have. Yeah, so you have to go and get like a subscription, a paramount or something just to watch one damn show.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:54

Yeah, it does seem to be a dearth of of decent films. Uh, and I'm getting fed up with the uh it was former special forces, they killed his wife and dog and goldfish. Now he's out for revenge. Atkins is the bastard, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:12

Yeah, it's like it's like the the the proliferation of British detective noir stuff. It's everywhere at a minute. He's like, he's an alcoholic detective that everybody thinks is a complete and total wanker, and now he's on the trail of a murderer. How could this possibly go wrong? You know, every single one of them is the same damn setup.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:32

Very tired, isn't it? Yeah. I I want to see, well, I want to see lots of things, but I want to see uh some occult detectives. Like the rivals of Sherlock Holmes. I mean, they weren't all occult detectives, but that that was quite a decent series. Yeah. Let's get something like that. Who do we speak to? Who do we have to petition? Who do we have to threaten? Yeah, I'd love to see a Karnaki series. Alright, so there we go, friends. Thanks very much for joining us again today. Do let us know your thoughts on Volthume. Uh, where do you rank that amongst the Martian towels? Or where do you rank that amongst the scientific towels? Uh it falls into both of those categories, I suppose. And uh a little bit of cosmic horror as well thrown in, why not? What are we doing next time, sir?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:17

Uh next time we're gonna do a very special Patreon bonus episode. Well, we haven't decided what we're doing it on yet, but we we we assure you it'll be well worth tuning in for.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:28

I've got a mind to delve into the Wandry Smith letters, I think. Uh I've had a cursory glance through it, I've had a quick skim through. I think I'll take a little bit of time and and pick some nice letters out of there because wandry is not really spoken about enough. Well, the wandry brothers, really, because it's the two of them. Yeah, yeah. Uh um we have covered one wandry story, I think, on the Insta Club. Tree Men. Tree Men, yeah, which was tremendous, of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:57

I like that one. It's a yeah, weird one.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:00

So, yes, maybe something along those lines. We shall see. Of course, if you do have any ideas, particularly our patrons, do write in and let us know. And as a patron, if you'd like to join us on the show at any time, or if you'd like to do a read-in for us, please do let us know. As always, if you'd like to support the show, do look at signing up via Patreon. You get bonus content from Strange Shadows and the Innsmouth Book Club, a quarterly copy of Innsmouth News, and free entry to the Oddly Moist Innsmouth Literary Festival. On that note, it's a goodbye for me, Rob Point. And it's a goodbye for me, Tim Lendy's.