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Study 122 - The Thing from–"Outside" (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-20 16:59:06
Imported:
2025-02
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Content

Time? Space? Plot? Nothing makes sense anymore as we're greeted by The Thing from "Outside" by George Allen England!

Special thanks to reader Greig Johnson! Get to his eBay shop NOW!!

The Radium Age series of books from MIT Press.

The 1923 Interview with England.

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Comments

Viking Guitar

“Do our listeners like dinosaurs?” Seriously, Chad, stop farming engagement. OF COURSE we like dinosaurs!

Jason Thompson

Wow! This was great. Weirdly I got it mixed up in my head with *another* polar monster story whose name I can’t remember, where IIRC they see the monster at the end and it’s basically a giant starfish? Between this, “Amundsen’s Tent,” and “The Wendigo”, there are some crazy good old polar exploration horror stories…..

Bugberry

The speculation on what the entity would want with human brains reminded me of the episode of Futurama when Fry gets his nose stolen because aliens think his “human horn” are human genitalia.

Jason Thompson

About the time distortion of age, there’s a kinda cool Richard Matheson short story called “Mantage.” (Spelling intentional) Simple, but memorable, at least to me.

Braccus Rex

It was so weird, during each story bit, thinking "Waaaait a minute", just to realize mid point I've read this story one or two years ago x)

Aaron La Vene

Freddy Englund 2 : my brother is a bigoted boogaloo

Drix

This story is great! I actually read it a few years ago in a different anthology that really adds a different cast to the reading: The Ithaqua Cycle, put out by Chaosium. Subtitled, "The Wind-Walker of the Icy Wastes". You've actually already covered another of the stories in there, The Wendigo by friend of the show Algernon Blackwood! There are also no less than 3 stories in the anthology by August Derleth, my favorites of his being "The Thing that Walked on the Wind" and "Beyond the Threshold". This story is probably the one that stuck the most in my memory though. For any uninitiated, Ithaqua is one of those post-Lovecraft additions to the mythos- A frigid, icy being with a tendency to kidnap people and carry them miles above the earth as it travels around the globe, or even outside of it to other far flung places or dimensions. Ithaqua is associated with the far north of the world, ala the Wendigo and this story, and a lot of the same motifs in this story are present throughout the anthology. When I first read this, I was looking at it mainly through this lens. It's doubly cool(bad pun) to me that you guys encountered it in your Radium Age anthology, but you can see how the Weird space/time shenanigans and otherworldliness of the unseen antagonist really can fit like a peg in the Cthulhu Mythos, while still standing on its own feed removed from that context. For some reason, I really have a soft spot for anything Ithaqua-like, probably due to my love of winter. It was great to re-read this story and go on a windy winter walk today and listen to the coverage. P.S. Love the references to Jeff Vandermeer's Annhilation, the Southern Reach series is absolutely stellar.

Anne Ominous

Sooo...we've got a flimsy retelling of "the Wendigo" a la Charles Fort where they tell time by using bacon..?! Ok! I did like the author's way of describing their disorientation. Like everyone was fever dreaming or drank the 'adult koolaid' at the party

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

First off... Dinosaurs? YES PLEASE! The only thing I might have more of than Cthulhu Mythos books is dinosaur books, so I can also definitely make some suggestions if you guys are looking for good, public domain dinosaur stories. Now, as for "The Thing from - 'Outside'," I'm thrilled you have finally got around to covering this classic. The point I want to make about this story is the same one I made six months ago when you covered "Far Below" by Robert Barbour Johnson, namely that George Allan England, like Johnson, was a Fortean. In this instance this fact should be much more apparent since England actually namedrops Fort and even quotes him at length. Also as with Johnson, if you want a really in-depth, albeit brief, biography on England checkout the one assembled by Joshua Blu Buhs as part of his research into the influence of Fort on early sci-fi authors. My favorite insane fact that Buhs uncovered about England is that on Oct. 21, 1908, England's wife, Blanche Porter Kennedy, filed for divorce in Boston on the grounds that England had kidnaped their 7-year-old son. England denied this, that he had only taken his son camping, and counter-sued but the divorce still went through. However a few years later, in 1912, England wrote an article for New West Magazine titled “Is Kidnapping Legal?” in which he argued that under certain circumstances it was indeed justifiable. Suspicious.... But what takes all this into the realm of the truly outre is that Buhs reports that he could find no record of England and his wife ever having a son! Buhs' biography of England: http://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/george-allan-england-as-a-fortean

Ben Gilbert

Yes to dinosaurs. The movie adaptation of the Lost World starring Michael Rennie and Claude Rains was a favorite of mine when they broadcast it in the 60s. The dinosaurs were lizards with horns and fins glued on their bodies. I read Darkness and Dawn in 2001 on Project Gutenberg. It’s not the greatest but is very readable.

Illegal_Structures

As a native New Englander, I can tell you that Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts have a long-standing rivalry about who can be the most mocking and sneering. If a Harvard boy gets teased a bit, it’s just part of local custom. (Vermont has sensibly kept neutral to the whole dispute.) Also: an unpopular opinion, but i’m not so keen on dinosaurs.

Alexandra Schoell

Answer to your side question: I love dinosaurs! Growing up my absolute favorite was the triceratops, and I still have a plush of one my mom got me from the Smithsonian when I was a little girl! On to the story! I really enjoyed this one! It gave me a lot of similar vibes to "The Thing" and "Annihilation" or, as you guys pointed out, "Haunter of the Dark.". One of my favorite kinds of horror, one where the characters can't rely on anything their senses are telling them and they know it. It gives the author ampule room to create impossible scenarios, to just slice a scene in half and flip everything upside down until the reader is pulled into the same disorientation as the characters! X3 Most interesting was how you could view reality breaking down around them. The characters posit that this otherworldly creature must want something from them and conclude it's their brains because that's what's most unique about humanity. They also keep referring to how humans experiment on other creatures, trying to figure out how they work without regard to how the creature feels. As a result, I think that that's what's happening here; reality isn't actually distorting, this creature is messing around with their brains and causing visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations as well as breaks in memory and general confusion. Similar to the Voyager episode "Scientific Method" where unseen aliens are experimenting on the crew and wreaking all sorts of havoc. There are all sorts of little hints eluding to this, IMO: First, we have Mrs. Thorburn, who dies for reasons they can't explain. She's paralyzed and seems to be awake but can only gasp for air. Implying perhaps that her spinal cord has been severed? Or her brain stem? An experiment to see how vital the brain is for human survival? Starting from there the party all begin to see and experience different, and at times conflicting, things. All hallucinations that can be caused by the swelling of brain tissue putting pressure on different portions of the brain. An experiment to test the brain's reaction to artificial stimulus? Or even just a side-effect of putting their test subjects into a state where they can be tested more easily? Next is Mr. Thorburn who is already dead when we see him and it seems for all intents and purposes that his brain has been *removed*. Dissection to be able to observe the brain as an independent organ? The next victim is Marr, who is physically intact but moves like he's broken and acts like an animal, implying perhaps that his higher brain functions have been destroyed leaving only the "lizard brain"? We see (though unreliably) beforehand that he appears to have a fever of some sort, his brain being overclocked until it cooks? An actual fever, induced to kill parts of his brain or cause a hemorrhage or stroke? An experiment to observe how humans act with only their base instincts? Perhaps to see what they are "truly like" as animals? Lastly are Vivian and Jandron, both of whom I think could be seen as two types of a control for this experiment. Vivian comes out of all this with no memory of what happened to her and Jandron with his memory intact. A final experiment? Seeing how humans react in the aftermath? Are there any lingering side effects if they no longer remember what they went through? How do they act now that they are aware of what has happened? Sorry for the long post, but this story had such interesting ideas to sink my teeth into! I can't wait to see what you guys read next!

ESTY

All this talk of “geologists” and “lost worlds” brings to mind the tv series Saul of the Molemen. Thus~ I assumed that the characters had that same, specific American accent. Gee-aah-lagists Completely sane

Derek Scott

This story was extra scary because my boot liners had gotten wet so I was wearing just an extra pair of wool socks as I snow blowed for the 75th time this week. My toes starting going numb and I was sure a Thing from…OUTSIDE had a hold of me.

Jim Cannon

If you told me this was a Lovecraft story - I wouldn't have believed you, there's two (2) women in it - but it hits SO many of the same beats. But it also sounded like an Algernon Blackwood story. Damn, this was a good one!

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

It is, I think, important as a strange story that the thing from - 'outside' has intentions and methods that are thoroughly unknowable. It doesn't want their brains because it doesn't want. The deaths and confusion are at best by-products of the outsider's glancing presence. It is human to try to understand. But some things cannot be understood.

John Dingo

Strong vibes of Strugatsky brothers' "Roadside Picnic" with the "what could these alien creatures want with us?" talk. I'd love to hear you guys talk through that novel at some point (and not just because I've fallen down the STALKER 2 rabbit hole recently...).

Forrest Rush

Dinos? Yes please. Not weird fiction, but why not do Carnosaur by John Brosnan as well as the very b cult movie from the 90s. You guys may have already covered this or I'm having a mandela moment before my second coffee.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Oh, chiming in late to state YES, I am a fan of dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex is as evergreen now as in my early childhood—while a favorite I've gained as an adult are the Azhdarchids. I love my flying death giraffes. I'd certainly love to hear y'all cover more dinosaurs. Because you turned me on to the Radium Age, I actually just started The Greatest Adventure by John Tain. So far, so ridiculous (positive).

Dave Parfitt

I had to think for a few minutes on where I heard the term "scientifiction" before, and then remembered reading about Hugo Gernsback in the book Neutotribes by Steve Silberman. He coined the term "scientifiction", and did a bunch of other interesting things. He's also the Hugo in the Hugo Awards. Scifi historians will remember that Gernsback also traveled into the future to grow another Hugo in a vat of schnapps for the Lord of the Rings movies: Hugo Weaving! There's a little blurb about scientifiction in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Gernsback

Jeremy Impson

I *cannot* sufficiently communicate the level of relief I felt when Chad's fruity pebbles anecdote ended with a mouthful of pot-pourri and not, as I was fearfully certain, a mouthful of brightly colored aquarium gravel.

Jeremy Impson

I believe brain matter is largely made of fat, so I'd believe it makes for a passable lubricant, although one that will go rancid. For some reason, I am reminded that Brain Tanning is a process of using cow brains to tan skin into leather. The fat and certain enzymes in the brain soften and preserve the leather.

Long time hater

I was disappointed to hear the 'fruity pebals' turned out to be the smell of grandma's house, rather than delicious alien poop, or 'Faeces Pieces' Fry discovered (and continued to eat) in the Futurama homage to E.T. ...what a less magical childhood

Long time hater

To tie Dinosaurs and another point of the show together, you don't know what you've got until you study what you've got. Diabetes management drug Ozempic came about from a team of nerds fascinated with the venom of the (Dino-like) Gila Monster that featured a component leading to the commercial development of the glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1). If i had to go out on a limb, I would have to suspect that a hunt for 'human horn' as suggested by our esteemed other listener/commentor may have been the motivating factor...

KendoHead

"Radium Age" - More like, "Read, Yum! Age", am I right?

Richard Wolfe

“Should we cover dinosaur stories?”… Of course you should! Give us ALL the dinosaurs! 😃

It's a Ghost.

I'm all for you covering dinosaur stories! Also, I wasn't going to be that guy who corrects you for calling the plesiosaur in Lake Lametrie a dinosaur, however, I've just learned that plesiosaurs are a member of an extinct taxon of marine reptiles called sauropterygia, which means "lizard flippers." So to be clear, plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs, they’re lizard flippers.

Alan Ricks

The idea they want human brains for lubricant isn’t that far fetched. Its probably a reference to humans harvesting spermaceti from the head cavities of sperm whales and processing it into, among other things, whale oil - an oil that remains liquid even in freezing temperatures. Which seems like it would be valuable to whatever this freezing footprints thing is actually.

Alan Ricks

I have “The Thing from--Outside : The Short Science fiction stories of George Allan England” and really enjoyed it. At the time of this comment the paperback edition is on sale at amazon for $4.99 and its a steal. "George Allan England . . . to my mind, ranks with Edgar Rice Burroughs and Albert Payson Terhune as one of the three supreme literary artists of the house of Munsey."—H.P. Lovecraft

Pam Winkler

I adored the surreal horror of all the people's perceptions differing, without the ability to identify what the truth was. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of the The Magnus Archives, a horror podcast which has a lot of the distorted perceptions and the inability to identify reality as an aspect.

Richard Upton Sinclair Lewis Pickman

Seeing all the comments now I’m still coming to terms with all the different parallels. I definitely see the Annihilation comparison, but c’mon, the call the creature It AND The Thing! In fact, neglecting the fact it was written roughly 100 years ago, it plays much like a B-movie creature feature: they are out in the wilderness with one lifeline that’s abruptly severed, there’s relationship tension or a love triangle, the peripheral characters are the first victims, there’s a violent confrontation amongst the characters, etc. etc.

Eric Sroka

Liz and I are happy to be ambassadors for the Pine Tree State! It should be noted however, that as a rule, Mainers are hostile to outsiders, those “from away”. When you covered the Summer People, I knew the feeling- it’s after Labor Day. You shouldn’t be here! Thanks for the shout out- Madison was a blast, and you guys should do another meet up!

Elisheba

I love dinosaurs! Transplant my brain into a dinosaur with weird science!

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Oh, on the subject of dinosaur tales, one could technically recommend "The Beast-Jewel of Mars" by Leigh Brackett for that category. It's about a man facing down an illicit Martian drug gang peddling a unique kind of radiation that...devolves you into prehistoric monsters to get high. It's as bonkers as it sounds.

Tara Murphy

I am sorry I am so late to this but I HAD to offer a correction! Chris said that Labrador is a province in Canada. That's only partially true. Labrador is the mainland part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I know because I live in Newfoundland, the island part. I know, it is awkward and a mouthful, but it is home! May I suggest you look up the Labrador flag? I know all you Lovecraft nerds will get a kick out of it.

bmj

I'd definitely like to hear you guys talk about The Lost World!