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Study 101 - Far Below (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-08 16:11:22
Imported:
2024-08
Tags:

Content

It's ghouls vs. government grunts in the New York subways! We're discussing Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson - JOIN US!

Special thanks to reader Rick Sandidge of the Find the Path podcast!

If you haven't yet, dig on our full reading of Pickman's Model featuring Greig Johnson!

Track outro and most music from the show available here.

Next up: The Golden Man by Philip K. Dick

Files

Comments

Rob Valentine

One of my favourite weird tales, and on the one hand, though it's incredible you haven't covered this one before, it's also really great that you're still delivering the good stuff after all this time. On the other hand... wait.... WHERE'S MY OTHER HAND?!!!

Professor Murder

I also was reminded of "The Statement of Randolph Carter" during the radio scene. But much more importantly: Where was the C.H.U.D. reference?

Ryan Thomas

Will "The Golden Man" be about Stan Zbornak, inventor of the Zbornie potato opener? Someone from St. Olaf, south side, wants to know.

Ryan Thomas

"Far Below" brings to mind Clive Barker's 1984 "The Midnight Meat Train" and the same named 2008 film. Both are brutally graphic, so readers and viewers be warned.

MonsterTalk

So glad you finally got to this one! And they did a TV adaptation of it for MONSTERS which is on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFz0JLcwuGU I'm sad to say that the version on YouTube looks significantly better than the version I ripped from a VHS taping off CHILLER a zillion years ago. MONSTERS isn't my favorite show from that era but they did cover some classic stories including a Manly Wade Wellman featuring John Thunstone. I just wish the writing was better. But some eps had quite good practicals if you enjoy a good rubber suit. Oh and FAR BELOW is directed by John Carpenter's old partner Debra Hill. (RIP)

ChiveOnOCM

So much C.H.U.D. action.

Alan Ricks

The genre you are looking for is dieselpunk. ‘30s/40s New England subway cars wizzing by with searchlights and machineguns seems very dieselpunk. I liked this story alot, very pulpy and pulse-pounding while managing to tie together lots of inside lore and unease about how deep the conspiracy goes. Ian Gordon of Horrorbabble saying “You FOOL… Warren is DEAD.” is burned into my brain so if anyone is interested in some good readings check him out. Maybe he’ll read for Strange Studies one day, that would be a great crossover.

Beanz

The decision to not think too hard about the reality of these creatures while you're working down there feels similar to the sanity system in Call of Cthulhu. You lose sanity but then that separate Intelligence Check tells you if your character /really/ understands the horror of the situation and has a bout of madness.

Illegal_Structures

No theme this month? How about Aug-Ghoul-ust? Also, if I’m not mistaken, Hopkinsville, Kentucky (the hometown of the author) is known for an alleged goblin/extraterrestrial “attack” in 1955. Skeptics say the mysterious beings in question were actually owls, although I think it might have been some MK Ultra-type experimenting on hillbillies…

Daniel Restione

Great story! Would love to see a whole novel-sized expansion a la TED Klein’s “The Ceremonies.” Excellent reading job!

The Spider Incident

August Aberrations: aberrations are the theme for the month of August Or... Dignified, majestic aberrations Or (with some misspelling)... Aberrations are just blowing around in the wind Great reader for this story. Gave me real Patrick Warburton vibes. (Also, I think Worm-haunted Darkness will be the name of my next horror-metal band)

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

Thrilled that you guys finally covered "Far Below." I wanted to comment that I don't know what sources Chris' used for his Robert Barbour Johnson bio, but I feel it is worth mentioning that the most detailed biography assembled on Johnson - cited by S.T. Joshi in his introduction to Weird House Press' collection of Johnson's fiction and essays Far Below and Other Weird Stories (2021) - comes from historian Joshua Blu Buhs and is available online. I bring this up because Buhs repeatedly notes that Johnson had a decidedly casual relationship with the truth... by his own admission he constantly lied about his age, his place of birth, his education, professional accomplishments, etc... and with public records being what they were in the early 20th century this means that assembling an accurate biography of Johnson is extremely challenging. This also means that, among other things, we don't actually know if Johnson really worked as a wild animal trainer for the circus, just that he claimed that he did. Buhs does note however that Clark Ashton Smith's wife, Carol, commented in a letter that Johnson's pet cat was very well behaved. Why was Johnson like this? Buhs suggests that an important clue can be found in an aspect of Johnson's biography that we can be sure about and which Chris and Chad didn't mention. Johnson was a Fortean; a devotee of pioneering paranormal writer Charles Fort (the same one mentioned in HPL's "The Whisperer in Darkness"). By 1948 Johnson was heading up the San Francisco Bay Area branch of The Fortean Society (based in NYC) called Chapter Two. That Johnson was obsessed with Fort is not surprising as most early pulp and sci-fi writers were - this is actually the subject of Buhs' recent book Think to New Worlds (U of Chicago P, 2024) and why he was researching Johnson in the first place - but it's worth noting that Fort did not believe in what we might call consensus reality writing that he [Fort] was constantly irritated by “the classification of books under ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction,’” as he didn’t believe such distinct categories of knowledge actually existed. Johnson it seems followed suit which could explain his decision to pen the first story which treats HPL's Mythos as "real" and also how he came to the conclusion that if he was going to have a past he'd prefer for it to be multiple-choice. Link to Buhs' bio of Johnson: http://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/robert-barbour-johnson-as-a-fortean

Cole Caron

A small price to pay for mass transit, all things considered.

Taylor Peddy

I LIVE for the themed months you guys. I have a calendar going.

Andrew Brown

I think there’s as much Nietzsche as there is Lovecraft. When you look at evil, fight evil (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and do it for so long you change.

Andrew Brown

And BTW you need to read James White for a story that is not just dark! Please, all SFF isn’t about darkness (I mean most is but)….

Anne Ominous

Well that was a fun read! All charnel desires and shooting your colleagues down like dogs when the crack. Worked there before! What's this sub-genre of cosmic horror where there is a great and secret show happening that only a few (tortured civil servant) souls know about?

Jim Cannon

Wait, this same issue of Weird Tales has a story called "The Phantom Werewolf"? Chad, what the hell?

Allison Albright

I always liked the not-really-explained reference to the subway accident in Pickman's Model. Really cool to see that fleshed out a bit.

Ryan Harrison

Talking about CHUDly inspiration, in addition to The Midnight Meat Train by Barker which was mentioned by others, I wonder if Far Below was inspiration for Jeff Long's 2005 novel, The Descent (not apparently an inspiration for the film of the same name, although it seems like it would be)! I'd really recommend the novel for listeners who liked this story. In The Descent, the entire planet is filled with tunnels and cave systems which are so omnipresent and massive, and which bear such a remarkable variety and quantity of bizarre flora and fauna that they describe it as an underplanet (Journey to the Center of the Earth, perhaps?) The creatures living underground are hypothesized to be an offshoot from humans from millions of years ago (as mentioned in this story), and they actually achieved their own iron age before humanity and possibly uplifted mankind in some ways before having their civilization deteriorate. What really perked my ears up listening to your coverage was that in The Descent, as mankind begins to colonize this underplanet (and start building cities and mounting expeditions), they find that people who spend too much time down there begin to mutate and become more and more like these creatures themselves. I'd really be interested to see if Long was inspired at least in that bit by this story. I would really recommend the book. It is so creative and well written I haven't found anything quite like it since.

ESTY

Far Below is a cautionary tale of what can happen when you ignore a healthy work/life balance. They are obviously in need of more crew; they have got to add at least one Winston Zeddmore.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster. - Nietzsche (the lesser known first half if his quote about the abyss)

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

How great would a reference to this story have been in the 1974 movie The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3? The monitoring system described in Far Below could very well have been the beta version of the one Walter Matthau’s transit detective character uses to track the position of the high-jacked train. It would NOT have been cool though for the ghouls to suddenly figure into the resolution of the movie without any mention of them at the outset.