Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/09/this-true-crime-podcast-is-act.html
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I have the graphic novel for the story that the podcast is based on and it’s excellent. I recommend that on its own but i will have to check out this podcast 
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Seems there’s already a second “season”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06spb8w
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Highly recommended; particularly the first series. I really liked the conceit of it being presented as a ‘true crime’ documentary that turns… odd.
I was slightly less impressed by the second series, if only because it introduces an overarching conspiracy which didn’t seem to add much.
I didn’t spot the mispronunciation of New England placenames, but I forget whether that was by the American lead character or the British one, who would naturally default to the pronunciations of the British places the New England ones were named after!
I’m not sure whether a third series is on the way; seems likely.
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To save folks from having to hunt around, here’s the direct link to the RSS feed:
https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p06spb8w.rss
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Lovecraft is rightly recognized as a major and influential figure in the horror genre but the racism that pervades much of his work can make it problematic for a modern-day audience.
That’s why my favorite modern Lovecraft-inspired storytelling is Matt Ruff’s anthology novel Lovecraft Country, which puts mid-20th-century racism in the center of the story instead of shying away from it. I hope HBO doesn’t screw it up too bad in their upcoming adaptation.
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I finished reading TCOCDW a few days back. Good lord, is it padded. And the reveal seems terribly telegraphed.
Lots of creepy moments. I’m going to download the podcast and see if they made a trimmer story out of it.
And “Whisperer in the Darkness” is up next. This one is really SF, and both creepy and with a awful reveal at the end. Ugghh., shiny cylinder on a shelf.
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Thank you for mentioning that.
Lovecraft was praised as a genius for creating that sense of deep alien menace and sense of dark conspiracies… but when I learned “oh, he meant Chinese and black people…” I dropped that shit like turd on a summer day.
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I just spotted the advertisement (not even a trailer yet) for Lovecraft Country on (I believe) HBO. I am dumbfounded that they would try to tackle that amount of complex commentary and biting sarcasm, but if they can pull it off, remarkable.
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A little housekeeping before we start—Mystery Machine is just one of the podcasts we make here at Red Hook Stories. I’d urge you to check out the collection of oddities in Catherine Melman’s history-of-crime series Bite Size Noir and Kevin Dobbs’s reportage series Hear and Now—that’s “hear” H-E-A-R. You can find details of both at the Red Hook website and subscribe through whatever podcast software you use
There is a “real” twitter account @redhookstories but the rest of this seems to be bullshit
Is it wrong to assume “Mystery Machine” is a Scooby Doo reference?
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While his fear of the “other” may have been the inspiration for his creations, I feel there’s more depth to his work than a simple “non-whites equal monsters” analogy. Except for the short story Polaris, where the reveal at the end is that the creatures he’s been describing as stunted yellow-skinned goblins are actually Inuit people. I can’t believe that one is even included in compilations, it’s so overt.
It’s wonderful to see modern authors strip away the racism, misogyny and purple prose and make new works that celebrate the best parts of his stories while avoiding, acknowledging or refuting the unfortunate bits.
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There is a sequel, Whisperer in the Darkness that ties some of the other Lovecraft stories into a UFO mystery around an RAF base and small village in the UK. Also excellent.
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Yes, the third one will be based on The Shadow over Innsmouth.
Most of Julian Simpson’s other radio plays are available on his Soundcloud, and the other two episodes of his “Mythos” are currently on the iplayer. All of these are worth listening to, though there is a fair bit of material recycling between them.
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If mispronouncing the names of places in Rhode Island bothered you as a New Englander, I’m intrigued enough to listen in order to discover how badly is it going to bother this Rhode Islander (me), especially when I can distinguish at least six different Rhode Island accents!
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Lovecraft’s contribution to cosmic horror is significant, and i do think it’s good to focus on the genre itself however the genre is so intertwined with Lovecraft that i believe it necessary to confront his racism rather than erase it. At a minimum we need to remind ourselves what he stood for as to not lionize him.
I am reminded of Ender’s Game, the author Orson Scott Card is a real piece of work with their political/social views but the book is stellar. It’s necessary to question and confront the author and their voice while enjoying something they had a hand in.
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Norman Spinrad critiqued Ender’s Game when it came out for pandering to a stereotypical sf reader (a socially dysfunctional video-game nerd with delusions of grandeur) and that really seems like a plausible explanation for its popularity, all things considered
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I don’t know what the literary scene looked like back in the day when the book came out so i can’t say if its pandering or not, i read it about 8 years ago maybe? But the book to me at the time read very well, the theme and also the empathy of the main character really sold it to me. Still whenever i recommend the book to anyone i do qualify that the author is a POS
If you want your Lovecraft with shudders only from the horror and not the racism (always had a problem with that myself) might I recommend the short story compilation “Shadows Over Baker Street”? Eldritch Horrors confronted by Sherlock Holmes, carefully dated so as to fit within the accepted Holmes timeline. And not a “degenerate visage” in sight.
Absolutely. Xenophobia and nostalgia, and the clash of his atheism and love of modern science with that nostalgia, are at the roots of Lovecraft’s work, but all of his better stories have more going for them than just shrieking at the swarthy hordes. If that wasn’t the case, nobody but the most hard-core horror completionists wouldn’t be reading his stories, no matter how foundational they are.
It’s one of Lovecraft’s earlier stories, and that shows. Racism aside, it’s not very good.
He certainly became a better writer as time passed; there’s some suggestion that he mellowed down on his xenophobia as well, though he still was pretty damn racist by the time he died.
