Episode Details

The SFFaudio Podcast #659 – The Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard; read by Connor Kaye

This unabridged reading of the story (1 hours 38 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Chris Schweizer

Talked about on today’s show:
The Magic Carpet, January 1934, some public domain, the output of Lovecraft was a quarter of Robert E. Howard, not counting the letters, trying to make a living, a day job, write letter every 5 minutes, not into the marketing, rich stories, shocking, detective stories, fight stories, sailor stories, comedy, his weakest genre, historical adventure, salivating over every remaining sentence, everybody comes to Howard through Conan or his Lovecraftian output, at least 6 stories that are Lovecraftian stories, The Black Stone, The Thing On The Roof, he really doesn’t want to get to the action does he?, finally!, why is it that this other stuff doesn’t grab us in the same way?, we’re all stupid and lazy, the Siege Of Vienna, which one, the final chapter is a mirror of the first chapter, the amount of historical work he has to do, tons of research, doing his best to get the clothes right and the names, a Serbian knight, a real incident, he thinks its awesome, take slaves, Suleiman the magnificent, a slaving expedition, our Conan equivalent is crying, go to the bar and have some ale, we’re setup for WWI, the Astro-Hungarian empire, filling in history for us, making history really interesting through fiction, a Catholic school, WWI and Saskatchewan, opinions or ideas, favourite stories, Blue Flame Of Vengeance, she comes out of nowhere, until Sonya shows up, the love interest gets heart stabbed, motivated for some vengeance, she’s not into you, she’s the hero of this story, he never saves her, Godfried, some good characters, a big drunk dummy, unstoppable Hercules, kill a hundred men on the wall, tricked at the easiest thing, hyper competent in one arena, he needs somebody to take care of him, a big dumb oaf, mutually beneficial?, all those Janissaries is a few too many, dog-brother, that word “dog”, John Sladek, parodying their writing, Solar Shoe Salesman, hawk nose, pantherish, condor wings, he actually has them!, that 1500s era, those Polish knights, Victoria’s Secret wings, literally described, Connor’s conspiracy theory, try to wrangle the history into a story format, the coolest kind of things, she’s a historical figure, give Roxelana a sister, we can kind of have that aspect, Hardcore History, 16th century, the Battle vs. the Siege of Vienna, Turkish forces trying to get into Europe, the Polish hussars, a cavalry charge, very Riders Of Rohan, too cool not to include, maybe that’s where it came from, a twitter bot that does