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Episode 425 - Strange Eons - Part 4 (Patreon)

Published:
2018-10-27 18:21:01
Edited:
2025-05-18 02:28:40
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Join us as we conclude Strange Eons by Robert Bloch!

Music in this show is from The Night Ocean by Repairer of Reputations – grab it now!

Special thanks again to master reader Andrew Leman!

Comments

Macabre Mittens

Great episode! re: The Necronomicon on microfiche. There was a short story by Will Murray in last year's "Tales From the Miskatonic University Library" collection called The Trillion Young; the story posits what would happen if some teacher's aid haphazardly catalogs and digitizes the university's "forbidden books" section and posts it to the internet (including the Necronomicon). It's a really fun read. Spoilers: it doesn't go well. Chris, according to my 2nd edition PHB, the 7th level Priest (Alteration) Spell you are looking for is called "Astral Spell".

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Chris, exchanging your mind with another person is a NINTH level spell named Life Force Exchange. It clearly states that in The Complete Book of Necromancers. Get it together, man!

Jason Thompson

The whole idea that "Lovecraft could have become less racist if he lived longer" is interesting and I remember Gahan Wilson also addressing this in his story "HPL" but I gotta agree... wishful. It's possible he would have reassessed his anti-Semitism following the Holocaust, as a lot of American WASPs did. In general, though, it's hard to look at 40something white men and think "I bet they'll be more progressive once they get older!"

Parker Longbaugh

Lol, 'the vidphone'...so seventies! Thank you for for saving me from this schlock, boys! By the way, people aren't reading books because of their Apple vidphones.

Sanjay Mathew

Now we're at the end, I have a question. Bloch's basically done a mashup of Lovecraftesque but not really Lovecraft*ian* stuff here. Now the guys have been treating this quite sympathetically whereas Derleth, who arguably did the same thing, is always in for scorn. I get that Bloch never claimed to be writing in collaboration with Lovecraft as Derleth did, and in the end the difference between bad and kitcsh is subjective, but is this really any different from Derleth's work insofar as their place in the wider body of Mythos related fiction is concerned? Of course I'm only going from the excerpts that have been read out and haven't had a chance to read the text. Bloch in his other work shows himself a far more capable writer, technically speaking, than Derleth but just from what Mr Leman has read out this clearly isn't an example of Bloch at his best. Is that what makes the difference when actually reading these two texts?

Fred Kiesche

Listening to all the episodes in one go. Earlier you kept commenting on the "coincidences" (e.g. a scene that just happened to be a recreation of The Lurking Fear) or the cliches (e.g., the dynamite and the island), but I enjoyed the book and was reminded not only on innumerable CoC (or Trail of Cthulhu or Delta Green or The Laundry) adventures, but also the relatively recent Alan Moore - Jacen Burrows work of Providence (also earlier, The Courtyard and Neonomicon). I enjoyed the book and especially enjoyed the coverage.

Clint Page

I was wondering if you guys would consider doing a topics show on Delta Green. I’m not really familiar with it, though you speak of it as if it’s something very well known in the fandom. I’m guessing it’s like MI6 for weird phenomena?

Jon Hancock

As soon as I heard Andrew read the line "Don't think about it, don't ask questions," I knew we were listening to Bloch desperately addressing his readers 😊

Bret Kramer

Wow. That was a terrible story but an amusing series of episodes. It reminded me of the mostly forgotten Call of Cthulhu campaign “At Your Door”. Thankfully we live in a world where the Great Old Ones are checked by the ubiquity of HPL’s stories, including this podcast. Thanks for saving the world guys!

Brynmore

The ReverEND IS NYE (Nigh). Bloch had a sense of humor and is using it all over the place in this story.

Tom Meyer

This may have occurred to others as well, but the thing that I thought was genuinely clever in these stories was treating Lovecraft's writing as the kind of Lost Eldrich Knowledge™ so often featured in the Mythos stories. In Strange Eons, Lovecraft is treated almost like Alhazred.

Necropolis Railway

A third option for what to do with the problem of Lovecraft's stories existing in a post-Lovecraft mythos story-- besides having Lovecraft be a prophet whose stories are true or having an alternate universe where Lovecraft was never born-- is to have Lovecraft be a mythos entity himself, such as a face of Nyarlathotep, or a man possessed by a Yithian, or just a Yog-Sothoth cultist. Lovecraft-Nyarlathotep's plan might be to popularize the ideas and beings in the Necronomicon by writing initially obscure weird fiction that grows in popularity over time-- which might generate a kind of psychic energy for summoning the outer gods or something, but that leaves enough out or gets enough wrong so that the stories aren't actually helpful. This is basically how Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness deals with the problem: Sutter Kane as a stand-in for Lovecraft is actually an agent on behalf of the outer gods, bringing about the end of reality through his fiction.

Rafe Ball

After the marriage, would she be Kay Thulhu?