(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: eerie chimes)
O'Brien background and non-spoiler discussion
JM:
Good evening, this is Chrononauts, and we are back once again. I'm JM with Nate and Gretchen, and we are talking about artificial intelligence.
We've got a number of installments, if you want to hear the background of the technology, you can listen to our first episode in this sequence, which was on Samuel Butler's "Erewhon", but we produced a nice background segment where we talked about the history of computing up to that point.
And so far in this installment, we've been talking about works that really fit into our theme and that work well with our theme of technology and robotics and cybernetics. Well, this one doesn't really fit into our theme, actually. We were just like, hey, let's do this story by Fitz-James O'Brien. And yeah, we did, and it's not. It's more like a grim fairy tale or like Hoffmann maybe or something, right? So it's definitely a throwback a bit. And that's why we wanted to do it at the end. And because, you know, it's kind of just, you may be listening to this in any order, but this is the last of our recording block tonight. This is kind of like the bonus. This doesn't really fit in with anything that we're talking about. This is just a fun, good old time.
Nate:
Although, to be fair, some people do consider an early story of robot rebellion, which is why I stuck it in this episode. But after we read this, I think we all were in agreement that , no, there's no electrodes and machines and wires in here.
JM:
No.
Gretchen:
It is about just sort of a man-made thing becoming conscious. So it's vaguely sort of related, but not necessarily.
JM:
No, I mean, everything that happens is pretty much the result of magic. I liked this because of the over-the-top nature of it.
Nate:
It's very over-the-top.
JM:
So it is worthwhile to refresh us once again, because although our author, Fitz-James O'Brien, is one that we have actually covered before, way back on episode number four of Chrononauts when we did way too many short stories in one episode. Although not as many as the next time we decided to do a bunch of somewhat random short stories, which was like ten stories with tons of stuff in them to talk about.
And I think Nate and I were both a little bit intoxicated by the time we finished. Nice theme segue there, too.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
Gretchen:
Yeah, hopefully not as intoxicated as some of these characters.
Nate:
No.
JM:
Well, yeah, we'll see. I have a drinking game planned.
Nate:
We'll see how the next hour or so goes.
JM:
Just a quick refresher, though. Michael O'Brien was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1828. He moved around a bit as a youngster and eventually ended up in London, where he spent all his inheritance money. And he was already writing stuff for Metropolitan Magazine and Family Friend at this time.
But he ended up in New York in 1852, having apparently stowed away on a ship. And it's been suggested, although a part of me thinks this might be a tall tale that he told, but it's suggested that he was in love with a married woman and fled to escape the wrath of her powerful army officer husband.
And Michael subsequently changed his name to Fitz-James. He was a productive writer for the magazines and penned a number of stories and poems. His magazine resume is quite extensive, actually. Many longstanding and now considered quality papers at magazines. Nothing very long, as far as I know. But he was quite inventive for a short time. And according to Gary Hoppenstand, in "Robots of the Past", he was the first to really set his gothic tales in urban American settings. New York, mostly, his home turf, which he seemed to know very well.
Nate:
Yeah, have either of you read "What Was It"?
Gretchen:
I have not. I have only read "The Diamond Lens".
Nate:
Okay, yeah. That one's in "The Dark Descent", and I want to do that one on the podcast. But that one is definitely very much a New York as a character type story. It's really cool how the way that plays out and like this.
JM:
So I mean, I have a neat quote about that later, but New York, it definitely is a character in this as well and it seems in a lot of his stories. And Hoppenstand maintains that O'Brien was an important writer and cites how he was often discussed up to the middle of the last century.
But he was considered one of the New York Bohemian set, and he lived above his means and hung out with artists and writers at Pfaff's Restaurant in Saloon, where he had many friends. He also wrote several plays, the most popular of which was "A Gentleman from Ireland", which was quite successful.
When the Civil War broke out, he was quick to enlist and got wounded in the shoulder during a cavalry skirmish in West Virginia. The wound became infected and he died two months later.
So he's definitely the youngest of all our writers. Čapek died quite young at 48, O'Brien even younger. But he never published a book in his lifetime, the first collection emerging 19 years after his death.
So yeah, this is a crazy, fun story published in the October 1859 issue of Atlantic Monthly, which also published "The Diamond Lens" a year earlier. And it definitely has this grim fairy tale-esque quality to it. And there are a lot of elements, reminiscent of old German stories, magic and fairies, despite the modern setting of New York City.
Nate:
Yeah, I think you mentioned Hoffmann earlier, and I think that's a pretty good comparison point.
JM:
Yeah, I was definitely reminded of Hoffmann, though this certainly is less complex than "The Sandman". But it makes me think of what I've heard about some of Hoffmann's other stories, mostly. And of course, there are automata of a sort here. And there are also similarities to a lot of more modern things. Nate, you mentioned "Halloween 3" earlier.
Nate:
Yeah, man, "Halloween 3" is great. I love "Halloween 3".
JM:
It's definitely underrated, and I like the original idea of the Halloween series being an anthology. I don't know why it couldn't be that. That was supposed to be it, right? People are like, oh, there's no Michael Myers. That's not the original conception of Halloween, right? It was supposed to be like those Amicus movies almost, right? Except not individual stories within the one framework. But each Halloween was supposed to have a different storyline, right? It was just supposed to be scary horror anthology movie series.
Nate:
Yeah, and like the evil plot to kill all the children. It's just such great over-the-top pulp villainy Halloween 3 does great. But yeah, that was one of the many things this reminded me of. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" comes up a couple of times in the plot elements.
JM:
And in the Gary Hoppenstand essay, he talks a lot about that. He actually believes that this story subverts some important tropes, where Quasimodo can't get with the person that he loves because he's deformed.
Nate:
Right, yeah.
JM:
This one actually makes him makes, I don't know, he's not really a hero. That's the thing too, like he comments on, O'Brien was apparently a little bit self-conscious about his work, but he was very proud of it. But like, you know, he was also telling people that it wasn't any good, right? He worked really hard on his stories and they meant a lot to him. And I don't know, I'm going to bring this up. I want to bring this up actually early on before we actually get into the summary, but he definitely has some pretty bad prejudices which come up quite a bit in this story too. You know, we saw a little bit of in "The Diamond Lens". I think this one is a little bit more even than that. It's like, I don't know, it's right at the beginning, especially. You get this line about "the taint of Hebraic filth" and it's like, I don't know, it's weird though because like, he seems to be as a relatively new immigrant to New York City and America and stuff, like he really seems to be living it. Like he's living it a little bit rough and he's describing this seedy neighborhood in New York. And it's really evocative, even though there is definitely some nasty prejudice there. Even, I don't know, he gets into like a weird thing at the Italians too, right?
He's like, oh, there's no Neapolitan blood in my veins, but I love a dirty street, right? And you know, I mean, that is a bit unfortunate and you have to get past it. There's also like the villains of the story, you know, they're described as being "gypsies", but I think like what he's really getting at is these people are nomadic and they have no loyalty to the state that they live in. They have no loyalty to the place where they are. In fact, they're quite an international bunch, which it seems to be a problem, right? Like it seems to be a problem because they want to subvert all the institutions and destroy Christmas.
Nate:
Yeah. And I mean, again, that's another thing that reminded me of "Hunchback of Notre Dame", is that I guess it's more present in the Victor Hugo novel than some of the pop culture adaptations that people might be more familiar with, but there's definitely the stealing the white baby plot in a Hugo novel that I don't think they included in the Disney movie or any of the subsequent film adaptations.
Gretchen:
Isn't the woman that the main character of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", isn't she also supposed to be like Roma?
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Is that the case?
JM:
I haven't read it.
Nate:
She grows up her whole life believing she's Roma, but she's really a white baby because her...
Gretchen:
Oh, okay.
Nate:
Adoptive quote unquote mother stole her. You know what I mean?
Gretchen:
Yeah, yeah. So I was going to say I was like, did did O'Brien make that worse? And it turns out he just took from Victor Hugo.
Nate:
Yeah, pretty much.
Gretchen:
Instead of just subverting it, you know, not a great way.
JM:
So I don't know. I mean, I don't know if that's something specifically he commented on, but certainly that main person when I was looking into people who might have written essays about this and stuff was that Gary Hoppenstand dad. And he definitely refers a lot to Hugo and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if there's any indication that he said he was specifically influenced by it, but it certainly seems like it may have been a thing.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, it was a hugely popular novel when it was published. And I mean, even to the present day.
JM:
Oh, yeah, it was like 1830s or something. Right.
Nate:
Yeah, I'm not sure of the exact date, but it was certainly a couple of decades before this one.
JM:
Yeah. And he does mention Poe and Hoffmann as well.
Nate:
Yeah. And again, which feel like very major influences on this.
JM:
Yeah. And this story actually does remind me a bit of Strobl. Like it reminds me of not necessarily just the idea of the rabbit story, but just like the general style and the kind of over the topness of it a little bit.
Nate:
The bombacity.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Because like, I guess the thing is, is it is definitely has a lot of prejudice to it. And it could have been like a very uncomfortable and unbearable read because of it. But it's almost because it is so absurd and like so ridiculous that I think it kind of softens the blow of it.
JM:
Yeah, I agree. I was just going to say that like I do think there's some there's some real vicious cruelty in this story. Like it just so over the edge that it's like, yeah, I don't know. It's just kind of fun, right? Like I don't it's kind of creating "The Wondersmith" drinking game, right? Or like, yeah, that's just you want to be like that with this one, right?
And I don't know. I do think like it's kind of every time we do not every time, but a lot of the time when we do some episodes, like we end up running up against something that doesn't quite fit in. And this one doesn't quite fit in, but I'm glad that we I'm glad that we did it. It feels kind of like the bonus part. You know, it's just like, all right, it's time to have some fun now. And like, no heavy themes really. I mean, there's a little bit and you can argue that there's a bit of a social commentary thing going on with this, which I kind of want to get into more at the end. But this is like, pulpy as fuck.
Nate:
It really is. I mean, it's a great bookend with the Butler, you know, we started this whole block with a really dense, serious, I guess, humorless in the context of satire, but really dry, philosophical screed. And we're ending it with this ridiculous pulp romp. And yeah.
Gretchen:
It's like, yeah, Butler, he had a purpose for writing it and he had very specific things he wanted the reader to take away with like a very deep meaning.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Where this is just fun. It's like just it's just absurdity for the sake of fun. Yeah.
JM:
What I really interesting too is that this is what a lot of the really popular magazines of that time were publishing. This is an example of extremely popular fiction of that time. This is not obscure. I mean, it seems obscure now because not many people know Fitz-James O'Brien's name and I don't think too many of his actual like books are in print now, but this, it's really interesting to me because this is on the level of probably the most pulpy over the top thing that we've done on the podcast.
Nate:
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, yeah.
JM:
Yeah. And it's these wrote for these big magazines. That's what kills me. Yeah. Like it says, I'm not saying he's not good enough for them. Not at all. So when we were reading, what was it? "The Sirdar Chessboard" or something like that?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. So that was in, I don't know if it was Atlantic Monthly, but it was something like that. Right.
Nate:
That one was Harper's.
JM:
I was kind of commenting when we were doing that. I'm like, you know what? All the stories in these magazines seem like well written, but a lot of them are just not that great. Like it doesn't have, it's missing something. O'Brien has zest. He has fire. I mean, you may not be like, I don't know. I'm trying to think of like 1850s. He would have been. Well, I don't know, even like American short story fiction was still pretty new at that time. Yeah. And Hoppenstand kind of maintains that he thinks that O'Brien was very important to the development of such. So, and he's not the only one.
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, 1850s definitely seems pretty early. I'm not sure exactly when Harper's and New Atlantic and Scribner's and all those magazines start. But I can't imagine it would be too much earlier than the 1850s. I was trying to figure out like who I really like for early 19th century American authors and the field really isn't that large. Like before 1850, you have Poe, you have Hawthorne. But I mean, who else is there really for big names? There's not a lot.
JM:
I read Charles Brockden Brown get mentioned in that as well. Yeah. But I haven't read anything by him.
Gretchen:
I actually I've only read "Arthur Mervyn", which I did enjoy quite a bit. But yeah, I haven't read anything else by him.
JM:
Yeah. I don't know. Getting back to like just wanting to get most of it out of the way just to start with the unfortunate racism in the story, the anti-Semitism, but also I think the suspicion of more nomadic kind of stateless seeming people.
Nate:
Oh no, for sure.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely the race that is the Roma. And yeah, there's the stereotypes with like the playing instruments and being into music and the fortune telling and that they're like they all have the same like oriental eyes or something.
JM:
Yeah. It's very unclear where these people actually belong actually. Like it's so it's so nebulous. Right. Like it says the Oriental Bohemian.
Nate:
No, I mean, it's the same Roma stereotypes we've seen in fiction that I mean, certainly up till the 80s and 90s, maybe, before it fell out of favor as far as being like acceptable in fiction. I'm not sure. I mean, definitely like the Dark Shadows episodes in the 1960s when they go back to the 1897 timeline like plays it up really, really hard in a way that I would have kind of expected.
JM:
I don't know what happened there?
Nate:
There's Roma characters who are I guess are not, they're very exemplary of the stereotype.
JM:
Okay.
Nate:
Yeah, without getting into too much plot detail or sidetracked.
Gretchen:
But they do mention that the main antagonist is like Duke of Egypt or something. What is the title that they give him?
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And the reason that they use "gypsy" is because they did associate Roma people with Egypt.
JM:
Right.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
So it is kind of like, I guess you're supposed to imply that is the racial group.
JM:
Yeah. And there's also this like thing that was probably not atypical of the time where it's a suggestion that like certain negative traits, it can't be helped. Like the people are not necessarily to blame. It's where they come from that makes them prone to things like alcoholism, for example. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Alcoholism is the hero of this story. But I don't know.
It's like, and then there's this weird nasty application that like there's a certain natural uncleanliness practiced by certain types. I don't know. Like it's a little much, but again, he gets it out of the way pretty early on. And I will admit that his description of New York City and the area, the Bohemian area that this story takes place in is pretty colorful and cool. And also his own life kind of seems to mirror this a little bit. Like, and I definitely don't think like, I mean, yes, he may have had his prejudices and all that, but he definitely seems like he was himself kind of living on the edge. I don't know, it's just like typical of the time, I guess. And I don't know, he couldn't help himself. I think that O'Brien is a little bit endearing despite himself. And I don't know, without further ado, I guess let's sum up this baby.
Nate:
Yeah.
(music: echoey bells)
plot summary and spoiler discussion
JM:
So our story concerns the denizens of a cramped little lane intersecting Chatham Street by the East River. It's a cosmopolitan little thoroughfare, maybe a bit seedy and rough. But interesting to be sure. And the author compares it to the Roman ghetto and says that he enjoys a dirty street. Personally, managing to get in that little ding at Naples in the process for some reason. And he colorfully describes some of the people that pass over its dirty slushy cobbles. Ignatious children, pregnant women with multiple infants hanging off them, and eccentric tradespeople peddling their strange wares.
And there are a number of shops and stalls described. A fortune teller's place, a place that sells artificial eyes, a bird shop, a bookstore that only seems to contain odd volumes, and a mysterious shop that doesn't display anywhere at all, but whose proprietor is known as the Wondersmith.
What's a Wondersmith?
You may well ask. The name definitely suggests to me some kind of dapper Willy Wonka-esque figure who makes delightful things. But he certainly isn't a delightful person, as it turns out.
He's a very dour gentleman named Herr Hippe, and his abode, where our story really begins. The Wondersmith lives and works at number 13, the largest shop in the lane. There is a miniature theater of mannequins in the window, little figures that seem to be playing instruments and performing. It's very lifelike, and the Wondersmith has great skill with carving and painting these wooden figures.
He's not a happy man, though. He is, in fact, an old deposed Duke of Egypt or something.
I don't think he's really a Duke of Egypt.
He's a tall man, though, with saffron skin and a mustache that is described repeatedly in the text as "snake-like". He doesn't even have to twirl his mustache. It twirls itself. And he's bitter with the loss of old glory, and he and his friends have a great desire for vengeance against the civilized world.
He and his associates are gathered in the back of the shop one night to discuss the murder of Christian children. And they gather the fortune teller, Madame Filomel, the eye man, a Frenchman named Monsieur Kerplonne, and Mr. Oaksmith, an Englishman. He does nothing throughout the story.
It's near in Christmas time, and the old Grand Duke of the Gypsies has a plan which is quickly revealed. He is carved with care and diligence, a small army of wooden toys, soldiers and nobles and princesses, all of whom carry little sharp swords and daggers, and all of whom seem to wear expressions of malice and rage. This is a malice and rage mirrored by, and created in the image of, Hippe, the Wondersmith, who wishes to make his kind once more, lords of the earth. His ideas seem to be a little overambitious, considering all he has at the moment is a box of toys.
But these he plans to imbue with the essence of evil souls, all acquired by Madame Filomel, and stored in a glass bottle which she has brought. She describes them as the pick of a thousand births. Ethereal demons, every one. And she should know, being a midwife who can tell the difference between the squall of the demon and the cry of the angel child.
So there's a bit of a pretty hardcore implication here in that she's basically killed all these babies. Probably at the request of the parents, or the mother at least, because that's one of the things she does, I guess, being a midwife and all. Not just the creator of life, but the bringer of death to young babies.
But, anyway, each of the toys will be possessed by one of these souls, and they will be sold to the children of the land. At night, the toys will animate and strike down the children of Christ. And they get into the wine and toast to Lord Abigor, the god of soldiery.
Nate:
Specifically port wine, which I happen to enjoy more than the band Abigor. You know, I listened to a couple of their records in preparation for this, and it just wasn't doing it for me.
JM:
I really like Abigor.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I like them a lot. I like, especially the album Opus 4, that one.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I don't know if you've listened to that one. Which ones did you listen to out of curiosity?
Nate:
The first two.
JM:
Okay. Yeah, I like those two. I can see how maybe at some point, you know, you'd be like, yeah, I don't need this kind of black metal right now, but I don't know. I like them a lot, but a bit of black metal talk there, nice to hear Abigor's name invoked. Yeah. Now, so they get into wine, but Oaksmith would prefer brandy. Hippe, though, hates the stuff and goes on a rant about how it is the devil's broom.
It is fallen wine, after all, and we can think that a cursed son of a dog, the mysterious Martinus Padua, who invented brandy in 536 or so, as we have seen on the podcast recently.
Nate:
Absolutely, yeah.
JM:
Yes. Folks, don't believe everything you hear on the internet. Balthazar, the old Grand Duke of Egypt, blames the devil's brew for the loss of his son. He also apparently has a daughter, but they don't talk about her. In fact, the others observe that mention of her seems to make him gloomy.
Kerplonne has one of his artificial eyes, and it seems they have some sort of magical property about them and can actually be used to see things. He relates how he sneakily spied on his niece, the ungrateful wretch who was going to elope with her lover by using it to read her love letters while it was in one of her drawers. He likes to place the artificial eye outside the door of wherever they are hanging out to watch for intruders and spies, and they first test the mannequins by releasing the souls into them, and the little fellows fight over a coin that is tossed onto the table. Luckily for everyone, the souls can easily be put back in the big black bottle. It's not enough there, and they must have blood!
Hippe must have something against the birdman, for they go to his shop to have a little fun. Kerplonne has a key somehow, and they let themselves in. The birdman doesn't live on the premises, so the place is deserted except for cages filled with exotic birds. Some of them begin to talk.
They want brandy!
And at first, the intruders are startled. They release their little soldiers, and they commence a hellish massacre, though the birds, especially the big minos, put up quite a courageous fight and do a share of damage with their rapier-like beaks. At last, though, all is still.
While this is happening, Zonela, the daughter of Hippe, is up in her cramped, miserable, little attic room, where Hippe keeps her cloistered with no light at night. She is the beautiful princess locked in the tower, and she seems a lonely and pathetic creature, but she has a visitor, one who admires and loves her deeply. This is Solon, the bookseller, a little man with a large hump on his back, which he is very self-conscious about and considers a crippling disability that makes him unworthy.
Zonela, meanwhile, spends her days wandering the streets with a barrel organ and a little monkey on her shoulder, playing and doing tricks, respectively.
Nate:
In Victor Hugo, it's a cute goat.
JM:
Yeah. And as it is one of the things, I was reading this story, and I was reminded of the film "Phenomenon" because of the monkey, but also because of the fairytale-ish feeling that it brings. So I wanted to watch that one again after reading this, but even the ending kind of resembles an Argento film a little bit, but it's a hard life and people tend to be cruel to them. She doesn't believe Hippe is her real father, and the monkey seems to be her only friend besides Solon.
Speaking of Solon, he's a decent chap, and it's cool that O'Brien didn't make the bitter Hippe the humpback of the story. Solon is a little bit self-pitting, though, and Zonela gently chastises him, saying she would love to sit out with the sun and read books all day like he can. She wants Solon to tell her a story, so he does, a fairy story, in fact, that's transparently about Zonela and himself.
One night, while he lies dreaming, some little people come out of the books in the room. Little people look like letters and dance merrily about the room, sort of a happy contrast to the evil little people that Hippe has made, and the fairies greet him and transport him to Fairyland, where there is much dancing and glorious music. His new friends tell him that only poets can cross the threshold into this land, so now he's a poet!
He writes anonymous verses, and no one knows they are his, though they are admired. And the two lovers giggle, and it's cute and sweet, and so on starts playing the organ, while Zonela and Furbelow, the monkey, dance.
Sadly, their happiness is abruptly and violently interrupted by Hippe, who storms into the room in an excess of fury, his black face snake, all a quiver. Hippe starts by viciously booting the poor monkey across the room, and O'Brien takes obvious delight in describing just how cruel and horrible this man and his friends are.
But, Hippe especially, after Furbelow has fallen into a heap in the corner, Hippe starts making grand and terrible villain speeches. The tableau is described with mythical grandiosity. In fact, there are a lot of mythical allusions throughout this story.
arms around him, and this gives him strength to retort, defiantly. Solon is withering under the Wondersmith's voice and baleful gaze, but Zonela puts her Does a little good, though. The Wondersmith grabs him, and the moustache seems to hiss venomously, delivering his coup de grâce, and also something of a story of his own life experience.
"Your skeleton will be interesting to science when you are dead, Mr. Solon," hissed of Wondersmith. "But before I have the pleasure of reducing you to an anatomy which I will assuredly do, I wish to compliment you on your power of penetration, or sources of information, for I know not if I have derived your knowledge from your own mental research, or the efforts of others. You are perfectly correct in your statement, the discharming young person, who day after day parades the streets with a barrel organ and a monkey, the last unhappily indisposed at present, listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys and depraved men. You are correct, sir, in stating that she is not my daughter. On the contrary, she is a daughter of a Hungarian nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son, crooked spawn of a Christian, a son, not like you, cankered, gnarled stump of life that you are, but a youth, tall and fair and noble in aspect, as became a child of one whose lineage makes pharaoh modern. A youth whose foot in the dance was as swift and beautiful to look at as the golden sandals of the sun when he dances upon the sea in summer. This youth was virtuous and good, and being of good race and dwelling in a country where his rank gypsy as he was was recognized, he mixed with the proudest of the land. One day he fell in love with his accursed Hungarian, a fierce drinker of that devil's blood called brandy. My child, until that hour had avoided this bane of our race, generous wine he drank, through the soul of the sun our ancestor palpitated in its purple waves, but brandy, which is fallen and accursed wine, as devils are fallen in accursed angels, had never crossed his lips until in an evil hour he was reduced by this Christian hog, and from that day forth his life was one fiery debauch, which set only in the black waves of death. I vowed vengeance on the destroyer of my child, and I kept my word. I have destroyed his child, not compassed her death, but blighted her life, steeped her in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She thought to solace her life with a love episode. Great little Epicure that she was, she shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she? Oh yes, she shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear Death, sitting between his shoulders."
That is a hell of a villain's speech right there. Revealing more of himself than he perhaps intended, he swiftly ties up Solon and tosses him into a closet somewhere. Zonela is locked in her attic.
So it's now New Year's Eve at last, and so yeah, this was the older conception of the awesome Christmas season that everybody's supposed to look forward to, which is, I don't know if I've gotten into it before on the podcast, but I'm not a fan so much, but it starts on the 24th or 23rd, and goes on until like January 4th or 3rd or something. I think it's the 4th, it's the whole idea of the 12 days of Christmas, right, like it actually starts just a little before Christmas day, it goes on till Jesus received gifts from the Magi and Wise Men and all that, like so, on New Year's Eve, that's when Santa Claus comes.
Nate:
Yeah, and that was the biggest thing that grabbed my attention during this story is that Santa Claus is coming on New Year's Eve and not Christmas Eve.
JM:
Yeah, I don't know, I think it's like it's our first story to mention Santa Claus. And it's the booze that saves Christmas.
But it's New Year's Eve and midnight is about an hour away and the children are all in bed waiting for Santa Claus, dreaming of wonderful magical toys, while O'Brien takes some time to describe how it's the most wonderful time of the year and all that, and all the cool new things dancing in the heads of the innocent, dreaming children of New York.
But now, it's time for the poisoning of the swords. So the conspirators assemble once again in the back room of Hippe's shop. The timing of their plan seems off. How are they planning to get these ensconced and unsuspecting homes by morning? I guess they might be able to take in some of the last-minute shoppers, but I don't know.
Gretchen:
Maybe like Santa Claus, they can work in one night.
JM:
Yeah, they're basically incompetent, like this is this kind of what that says. Despite all the grand villain speechmaking and everything, they're not very good at this, and it's kind of too bad, because a part of me is like, I wish they were kind of good at this, but still, they have acquired a special deadly poison from the dark woods of Guyana.
Yeah, I won't be singing Manowar today, but the poison is known as the Great Macousha! And this substance is so baneful and potent that its brewing kills the maker, and birds drop from the sky in the vicinity at the merest whiff of its vapors.
The big table in the parlor is covered in piles of inanimate mannequins. But what stands out, is mentioned first, is the huge decanter of port. All start quaffing liberally, as they anoint the blades of the little soldiers and treacherous nobles with little brushes covered in the killing venom.
Nate:
Port is really underrated, because it will really get you there really quickly.
JM:
Yeah, well, I mean, they've been at it for a while, I guess, they're just like painting these things, right? I don't know, it seems like dangerous work that is already being done a bit shoddily, but the four are very quickly getting drunk as they crew with the light over the coming victory.
Nate:
Yeah, but I mean, a good port or Madeira drunk will get you even worse than a wine drunk, like a normal wine drunk, because that stuff is twice as strong as your regular wine. So it's not to be trifled with, and that kind of drunk plays out pretty well in some other great works of literature, I think. There's a great scene in "Vanity Fair" where one of the characters drinks like eight glasses of port in a night and just has a very bad time afterwards.
JM:
Oh, there's also "A Nasty Anecdote" from Dostoevsky, but I can't remember what he's drinking and that most probably mostly vodka, but yeah, I think yeah, yeah, it's like the ultimate story of a drunk person making a fool of himself. And like, I don't know, I don't know if you guys have read that one.
Nate:
I have. Yeah, yeah.
JM:
Gretchen, have you read "A Nasty Anecdote"?
Gretchen:
I believe I have. I think it was in one of the collection of Dostoevsky that had "White Nights" that I read for a semester a few like a year ago.
JM:
I read it in the collection, "The Eternal Husband and Other Stories", and it's like, it's just this really cool depiction of this awkward official kind of guy, like this is a kind of character and a lot of city based go-go, Dostoevsky stories is this kind of awkward official who doesn't really socialize very well, and one of his employees is getting married and he's not going to show up, but then he decides to show up and he drinks like way, way, way too much and have to look after him and it's like.
Nate:
Yeah, it's great.
JM:
I'll tell you though, the one thing that this reminded me most of was somebody told me once about this is actually, Nin told me about this, I don't know if you remember him.
Nate:
Yeah, of course.
JM:
This guy he knew, I don't know where this was, but it was like Venom was going to play a show and this dude was like really excited about getting to see Venom because it's Venom, right? Yeah. And he's like, I'm in a league with Satan, I got to meet Chronos, and like, you know, he's so excited to see Venom, but he got so drunk that he missed the set and spent the whole time in the bathroom, like, he never got to see Venom.
Nate:
I've heard many stories about people doing that, I've never been there myself, I came close to being there myself, but never quite got there, but yeah, I mean port, Madeira, can be some slippery stuff and definitely if you are into Victorian literature, count all the references in all the Dickens and Thackeray and whoever, great thousand page British novels to port and Madeira and you'll find there is quite a few people who are drinking this stuff a lot in the 19th century and it's falling a little more out of favor in the modern world, but yeah,
JM:
I mean, it's a bit sweet, right?
Nate:
It is. It is for sure.
JM:
Not the kind of wine I like to drink.
Nate:
But it's all 20% alcohol. So yeah, you'll be getting places pretty quick.
JM:
Yeah. It's kind of this connotation that like almost like these guys, you feel sorry for them because they can't help themselves, like they have to drink and it's kind of, I don't know, like I mean, I'm joking about alcoholism being the hero of the story, but like, yeah, I mean it saved Christmas and that's good, right, but I don't know, I'm just like, yeah.
Gretchen:
It saved all of those Christian children.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, so evidently, they haven't learned that you should get drunk to celebrate after the battle. And Hippe says, "let's drink great drafts, brothers", and he leaves off his strange anointment for a while to lift a great glass filled with sparkling liquor to his lips, let us drink to our approaching triumph, let us drink to the great poison Macousha. Subtle seed of Death,--swift hurricane that sweeps away Life,--vast hammer that crushes brain and heart and artery with its resistless weight,--I drink to it."
Their first victim, of course, will be Solon, they have to test everything out, Hippe gloats and knows that Solon stuffed into the closet next door can hear every word, but the paulters are getting more and more inebriated as they do their work, starting to slur out nonsense.
"I see the faces of millions of young corpses," says Hippe, "all young, all Christians,--and the little fellows dancing, dancing, and stabbing, stabbing."
Filomel awakens from a dose with a start and confirms that, yes, she still has got the precious bottle of souls pulling it part way out of her voluminous pocket, but she leaves it kind of unsecurely hanging there, "perfectly right, let's drink", says Hippe, before his head hits the table in a drunk dose, the others are all nodding off too, meanwhile Solon is saved from his despair by the arrival of Furbelow the monkey, nursed back to health by Zonela, dropping through a stovepipe hole in the ceiling, and Furbelow has a knife, and it's great, his hands are free so he's able to take this and cut away his bonds.
Free at last, he exits the room and runs straight into Zonela, who's also gotten out somehow, which he's not gone into, but I don't know, it's fine, she got out, so it's good. All's quiet in the parlor, and Solon is just looking in through the keyhole when he steps on something with a crunch, and he barely notices, but it's the artificial eye of Kerplonne, which of course he left out there as security.
Kerplonne sympathetically attuned to the artificial optic, howls in pain as the eye is crushed, causing Filomel to start in her slumber, and the bottle, hanging precariously by a thread, falls out and breaks on the floor, and all the evil souls pull forth and possess the mannequins piled all over the place, who come to life with vengeful gleams in their eyes, and all still sleep as little swordsmen like Liliputians begin stabbing viciously.
Hippe awakes and gives out a mighty shriek that curdles the air from miles and miles, and there commences a chaotic, wild scene of shrieking, gibbering, rending, and stabbing, and they start tossing the mannequins into the hearthfire as the poison does its work on them, and they're foaming at the math, and their bodies are slowing up and turning strange colors.
All the while, Hippe is ranting, now blaming the souls he enslaved for his demise. They're only doing their jobs, and some of the little death dealers run around the room in flames, setting fire to the curtains, and the whole place starts to go up. A hot wind filled with a terrible stench of death and decay issues forth as Solon, Zonela, and Furbelow roam like hell from the terrible conflagration. Presumably to live happily ever after, Christmas is saved, the booze has done its holy work, Santa will come, and the children will rejoice.
Nate:
So the moral of the story is when you drink your port, don't think about murdering children, but instead talk about science fiction literature history.
JM:
Yeah. Well, you know, I'm glad we got in a little vote for the murder of Christian children in this episode. That was a necessary addition to our work.
Gretchen:
So was the Bird Massacre.
JM:
Yeah. And as well as the Hunchback. Other of you read Hopfrog by Poe?
Nate:
Yeah, it's been a while, though.
Gretchen:
I have not read that one yet.
JM:
Okay, that seems like it may have been an influence as well. There's also, I think this was published after, but Ambrose Bierce's "Moxon's Master" about that murderous chess-playing machine.
Nate:
Yeah, I haven't read that one, but he also did an invisibility story which pairs very nicely with "What Was It, "The Damned Thing".
Gretchen:
Yeah, I have read that.
Nate:
Yeah, that's so cool. I do want to cover those two together on the podcast at some point.
JM:
And what about "A Nightmare Before Christmas."
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's hard to say, like, again, what is a direct callback to this because that's probably influenced a lot of things that were close in time. Maybe Tim Burton doesn't know, it's not Tim Burton, it's somebody else who made that movie.
Nate:
No, I'm pretty sure it was Tim Burton, wasn't it?
Gretchen:
Yeah, I think it is.
JM:
Okay, yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, but maybe he didn't know this story, but like, this is the fact that it's, I guess, again, his stories seem to be, it seems like they were well respected in their time and that he actually did achieve some notoriety, but like, it didn't last too long after the 19th century, he was kind of forgotten about, but like, unlike Mitchell, people knew who he was.
So I think his implication of New York is actually pretty good, and it seems to figure in a lot of his stories. In the recent, well, I guess, 1980s collection of O'Brien's tales, the "Supernatural Tales of Fitz-James O'Brien", the introduction writer, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, kind of makes some interesting observations about New York at the time.
So she says, and I think this is cool, this is reflected in a lot, it seems like in a lot of O'Brien's stuff, but in this story, she says, "New York of the 1850s was at once a hideous and a gorgeous monster. The streets were crowded with English, Irish, and German immigrants. Housing shortages led to horrible tenement environments. Opium dens and body houses were barely disguised as cellar restaurants. There were an estimated 5,000 prostitutes of every variety, vicious gangs of children on the docks, and a corrupt or incompetent police force. Fitz seems to have done well enough in the first two or three years in New York City. Later, hardship was to reduce him to a rough visage."
I don't know, it's interesting because he actually lived this, like he's not just, I mean, you know, we can make fun of his attitudes and whatnot, and there is reason for that. But it also seems like he lived this, right? Like he was right in it.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
So it certainly lends an air of authenticity, but also like the fact that he merged those sort of gothic-fiction ideas with this gritty, American, urban realism seems to be significant. It seems like not many others before him did that, like even Poe, none of his stories take place in an atmosphere like this. No, they all take place in old European crumbling castles and like even something like "Pym", quickly they get away from Nantucket and end up somewhere else, right?
Nate:
Yeah, and I think American cities between Poe and O'Brien just grew exponentially. I mean, American cities during Poe's time weren't really what we would consider cities now. They were like a downtown, and that was it. Nantucket was a huge center because it had a whaling port, and all the activity was around that port. It's nothing like the New York we know today. I mean, Philadelphia and Boston were tiny places compared to what they are now, but they were like the major cities at the time. And I don't think either of them really had populations beyond a couple tens of thousands of people until after the Industrial Revolution really hit America, and America attracted a lot of that kind of immigration you were talking about earlier.
JM:
Yeah. And I think this story really reflects that well. And I think that's like from what I've seen so far. That's one of the strengths of O'Brien is he really, really, I don't know, like he seems to have his own immigrant's, I guess, representation is coming through. But also like, yeah, he's he's in this land, and it's pretty chaotic. And it's pretty intense. And yeah, like, maybe he has some unfortunate prejudices that he brought with him or that are are established. But it's there's something about it that I think is really cool.
And I actually really like the beginning of the story and how it sets up all that despite the weird lines. It's like, there's a lot of cool background, I think. And although I didn't quote too much of it, there is like the stuff about the how you know how he's like watching the young kids throwing bricks at each other and like a woman tripping on the sidewalk. And like, she's got all these kids and all the people are like, putting up subscriptions for the hospital. And she goes, she gets taken in and the gates close and you wonder if you'll ever see her again, kind of thing, right?
I don't know, like again, the quote that I put in at the before we went to this from the song, right, like it's "The Fairytale of New York", it feels appropriate. This new chaotic life that we have to stay afloat in, right? And I don't know, it's just the fact that it's like, the Pogues too seems right, right? So I don't know, it's just, but I don't like it a lot. I mean, at first I was just laughing at how silly it was. But the more I spent time thinking about it and the more I kind of had to reread it a couple of times, actually, I enjoyed it a lot, actually. It is silly and it is over the top and ridiculous, but it's pretty fun.
And there's a little more to it. There's a little more than just this crazy fun pulpy story. It does go back to that old German fairy tale kind of tradition.
Nate:
It does.
JM:
The Brothers Grimm stories were published in 1812, I think. And often was not that much far behind. Those two together, right, had such a massive influence on storytelling, I think, going forward in the like short, powerful, snappy, kind of moralistic tale.
Nate:
Or even in the Gothic horror and science fiction genre, I mean, there's a pretty good chance that Mary Shelley, read Hoffmann, it definitely has its place in the genre's history, for sure.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
But yeah, I didn't have really too much to say about this. Generally, like I enjoyed this, it's fun, it's ridiculous. There's not a lot of deep themes here. I guess some of the ideas that are present as far as the descriptions of New York, I always enjoy. And as you were saying, the fusion of the urban with the mystical is always a nice touch, especially for how early this stuff is. And it does kind of tie in with some of the other works we talked about this episode.
But yeah, this is enjoyable with the caveats that we have mentioned previously, the anti-Semitism and the caricatures of the Roma people are unfortunate.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
It does feel quite on brand for the time that it takes place in.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
So yeah, besides that, I think it's a really fun story, the writing is very bombastic. And yeah, the great villain speeches in there, it's really fun. It's really fun to read. The scenes of carnage are just quite a delight to read as well.
JM:
I was trying to pick between the first one or the second, like, grand villain speech. Like, I'll pick the second one, which go went into his backstory and everything. Like, which is pretty silly. Like, we'll get revenge on some guy for randomly introducing brandy to his son. Like, it's so, it's so silly, right? Like, he didn't really do anything wrong. But okay, yeah, I mean, he couldn't mean that more sympathetic. But I guess he didn't care, right? Like, he just wanted to create this evil person.
Gretchen:
So I also think you are supposed to feel like he's not just evil, but also like ridiculous. Because like you were saying, they are very incompetent. And I think that having this grudge that makes no sense just adds to that.
Nate:
Yeah, it is a fantastic over the top villain speech, which we haven't had in a while. And it's always nice to see those.
JM:
But at the same time, I was kind of thinking of like more modern stuff, like Stephen King and that book "Needful Things", where like the guy kind of sets up the shop that gives people whatever the hell they need. Like it's kind of like just Twilight Zone-esque concept, but he's really evil and all the things that people think they need or tears the community part and everything like that. It's like, there's something about it still that's kind of alluring and powerful. And I kind of appreciate that. Like, again, when he says this is the Wondersmith, like I kind of think, oh, he must be really cool, right? Like he must be awesome. I want to go hang out with the Wondersmith, but he's terrible. But at the same time, he has this really awesome artistic ability, right? He can paint these, create these mannequins and they're really well-carved and really beautiful. And he always says that he always is like the work that he does is really good.
It's almost like, what do you think the fallen glory that he's missing really was right? Like, I don't know, maybe it was nothing, right? I don't know. It's kind of interesting, like kind of makes me think I wasn't very clear on who they were supposed to be or what the fallen glory was. They're like, we're masters of the world at one point. Like, but when? I don't know. Is Herr Hippe actually a thousand years old? Kind of weird ambiguity of Balthazar, ancient king of Egypt. I don't know. It's so big. But I kind of enjoyed it, I guess. In some way, like it was kind of like he's like this avatar for the ancient pagan world or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I kind of get it. I kind of get it. Maybe we should go back to the woods and damn the cities and poison the Christian children. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of fun. Fitz-O'Brien is cool, I definitely want to read a few more things either for the podcast or not, like, "What Was It?" I know we have that scheduled for a future.
Nate:
Yeah, I think we've been teasing the invisibility episode for like two years now. It's coming. Trust us. Yeah, but we'll get there. We'll get there.
JM:
But we could do Wells, "The Invisible Man."
Nate:
That's one of the other things that are scheduled there. It's another Wells/Verne matchup. So you're all excited to see one of those, right?
JM:
Yeah, I think the next Wells we do will probably be "Doctor Moreau", but we shall see. But actually, that is a good segue into what will we talk about next month. So we're going to do another host choice series. And last time we did this, the result was "Kindred" from Octavia Butler, which we all enjoyed. We're all going to pick again.
I've actually changed my host choice. I still love Jack Vance, obviously, and I want to get him out on the podcast at some point. But I'm no longer thinking "Emphyrio". I'm actually thinking something else, but we'll see what that is. I've actually changed my potential host choice. I want to talk about Fritz Leiber and his "Change War" series, which starts with "The Big Time" and includes six somewhat connected short stories. "The Big Time" is a very short novel would take only a little bit to read. Most people could do it in one setting if they were really into it. And yeah, the six stories are fairly short, but they're all kind of connected to the idea of a temporal war and the idea of powerful, immensely powerful forces at work in the universe attempting to change things and restructure things according to their particular ideology.
It's pretty interesting idea, pretty fascinating series. And I kind of thought of it because we were doing so many time travel stories lately. And I kind of wanted to stick to that theme. So that's my host choice potential. And I'm taking the one and two slot on the D6. Gretchen, what's your potential host choice for next time?
Gretchen:
Yes, it was, of course, my choice that won when we did "Kindred". And that was a book that I had read before. So this next choice is one that I haven't. And it is "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which it's interesting that you brought the Strugatsky earlier. What I decided on this one because one of my favorite films is Andrei Tarkovsky's adaptation "Stalker". And I'm very interested in reading the actual novel it's based on and see how it differs.
Nate:
Likewise.
JM:
Yeah. I'm looking forward to that too. And I'm actually looking forward to reading a newer translation of that, which we will find for this episode, because I have read this book before, but I read it in an older translation, which is apparently there are some really good translations of Russian classics out there in English. But I think that the Strugatsky brothers may have been somewhat ill served in the past. So I'm thinking that newer is probably better in terms of their stuff. So I'm looking forward to rereading that.
Nate:
Well, certainly when we do that one, I will comment on the original Russian and try to read a bit of it in that and make some comments on the translations when we do that.
JM:
So Nate, what about you?
Nate:
I am doing two of the same picks from the previous, I guess, times we selected this. That is Harry Martinsen's "Aniara" from 1956, a Swedish epic poem, as well as Renato Pestriniero's "A Night of 21 Hours".
JM:
Oh, yes.
Nate:
But I'm adding to it, Graal Arelsky's "Tales of Mars" cycle, which is one of the early 20s Soviet stories I've translated, because it does kind of go with it as the theme of "lost in space".
I think there's going to be some interesting stuff to go over with all three of these. "Aniara" being an interesting, I guess, high-brow break from the usual short story/novel format, and that the fact that it's an epic poem, and that Martinsen was a Nobel Prize laureate. So I mean, very much recognized by the literary community in a way that the pulp science fiction authors typically are not. The Pestriniero short story is one that is probably not that well recognized, but it is the basis for the Mario Bava film "Planet of the Vampires", which is one of my favorite science fiction movies of all time. It's just absolutely incredible.
And the story differs from the film in various substantial ways, but ways that are interesting to talk about. And I think it'll be cool to go over that one. And the "Tales of Mars" cycle is one that I just recently did during the translation over the last month or so. And it's just a really cool set of three short stories that I had mentioned earlier when we did the Vladko, are set roughly a couple thousand years apart from one another. And each of these three stories are kind of a standalone adventure, if you will, but can be definitely read in conjunction with one another and play upon one another's theme. So it'll be cool to go into that when we do.
So yeah, that's what I got for this potential selection.
JM:
Oh, right. Awesome. All of these sound really, really good. And I mean, I haven't read anything yet besides "Roadside Picnic" and the Leiber. But I don't know, I can say I'm really looking forward to all of them. And so I have my D6 in my hand. And I'm going to roll. So I will be one, two, Gretchen, three, four, Nate, five, six.
(dice roll)
Oh, that flew right out of my hand. Okay, so where did it end up? Okay, five. That means, Nate, you are our master next time. The host choice is yours, my friend. So we will be doing all those awesome short stories by Italian and Swedish and Russian writers. And it's going to be awesome.
Nate:
So definitely check our blogspot, because you can read the translation of the Pestriniero there as well as the three Graal Arelsky stories. We're definitely excited to bring those to the English speaking audience, because I think they're all really cool things to cover. And I haven't read "Aniara" yet, but I'm definitely excited to check it out, because it sounds like it's going to be a really interesting voyage.
JM:
Cool, I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait to get into the next batch of international short stories. I really want to read the story on which "Planet of the Vampires" is based. Yeah. And the Arelsky I've read so far has been really interesting and cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah, they all seem like really interesting stories, so I'm looking forward to them.
JM:
All right, me too. So we'll see you guys next month, probably four or five weeks from now, and we'll be bringing you that awesome stuff, which I don't think anybody in this part of the world has really talked about before. So this is going to be a really exciting episode. And I, for one, am just thrilled. I think this is going to be really fun.
And this episode was really great, guys, talking about all this stuff. This is the reason why we do this podcast. This is the reason why I think that doing this is awesome. So well done, everyone.
(voice winding down slowly)
We are Chrononauts, and we can be found in many places on the world wide web, such as chrononautspodcast.blogspot.com, and on Twitter at ChrononautsSF, and also, of course, we can be reached by email at chrononautspodcast at gmail.com. We have been Chrononauts. We hope you have enjoyed this episode. We will see you next time. Good night, everyone.
Nate:
Well, Gretchen, it seems like JM's batteries have run out a bit, and to be honest, I think mine have too.
Gretchen:
Well, I think we should call the Mending Apparatus this time. We should try to contact the Central Committee.
Nate:
I'm just going to plug in my radio transmitter here and see if we can't get a couple commands out. But I think I'm going to recharge myself, and we'll see you all next month for some interesting tales out in outer space. Good night, everybody.
Bibliography:
Hoppenstand, Gary - "Robots of the Past: Fitz-James O'Brien's 'The Wondersmith'", the Journal of Popular Culture, Spring 1994
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