The Obscure Medical History of the Twentieth Century

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN7OCxae91A

I couldn't get a book with this tale earlier than some days ago, so I read it and listened to the discussion on the podcast only this day. (I read it in 'Men of the Deep Waters' edited by Denton & White 2013.) For me, this surely was one of the best reads for and best discussions in Elder Sign. When reading I already noticed the great writing skill of WHH, and this was explained and deepened in the podcast. I liked the discussion because of the creative writing approach that was dealing with some of the problems I come across when writing. When I read a story that appeals to me, I always try to find out WHY it think it's good, but more often than not I can't figure out what it is exactly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I extracted these four creative writing tips out of the podcast: A good evocative setup raises intriguing questions for the reader: in this tale these are the eerie 'sea swamp', the vast expanse of the sea that makes men lonely and insignificant ( - really cosmicist thing - ) and the strange shipwreck, among other things. Don't loose sight of the humanity of the characters in the story: the Christmas scene showed that there are other things that the people in the story are concerned with outside the core plot; this makes the tale more real and so, in a way, more terrible. Only use a frame story when it is needed: the frame in From the Timeless Sea is used by WHH to give information to the reader that couldn't be given in another way (i.e. Philip and his wife and daughter must be dead by now - how horrible), and to reinforce the theme of nautical legends by introducing the nautical world. Mythos/universe building can be used to plant seeds for other stories. These seeds should be introduced in an organic way though, otherwise they appear out of the blue and should be deleted when editing your story. A landscape (this tale), artefact (The Hobbit/LotR) or something else (e.g. references to the Elder Ones by Lovecraft) can be used as a seed to deepen the mythos, create expectations by readers to read more tales (returning to a familiar world) and give the writer a framework in which to experiment with different angles to the stories and themes within the same world.

First of all, I just want to say a massive thank you to Glenn and Brandon for an excellent year of weird fiction stories! I've been trying to listen along as much as possible (I think I've only missed a couple of stories/episodes so far), and your discussions have always given me lots to think about and things to appreciate, even about stories that I didn't necessarily enjoy. Next, the good. My favourite discoveries as a result of the podcast are definitely Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin R. Kiernan, neither of whom I had even heard of, let alone read before (actually, I might have heard of Kiernan, I'm not sure). In fact, I'm going to say that Kiernan's "The Ammonite Violin" is probably my favourite story of the year (though already not my favourite of her stories having read a few more since). And I have to say that, of the two Ligotti stories, I preferred "The Frolic" to "Purity". It's a close call, but even though the word-smithing in "Purity" is better, it had too many elements I thought weren't explored thoroughly enough, and I felt the ending kind of fell flat. "The Frolic" is probably more my sort of story anyway, but I thought it worked a bit better as a self-contained episode, whereas "Purity" could have done with a bit more room to breath, or with being part of a wider mythos. There were some unexpected gems by authors I already knew, for example "The Insanity of Jones" by Algernon Blackwood. I had Blackwood pegged as a wilderness/nature weird fiction author, so it was really interesting to read a story by him with an urban setting, and such a seemingly mundane subject matter (I don't mean mundane in a bad way either). And of course, having an excuse to re-read stories I've read before is great. Reading Chambers's King in Yellow stories is always a treat, and I'm glad to see "The Mask" finally got the votes it needed! Also, Lovecraft's "The Festival", which I knew I'd read but had no memory of - now it will always stick in my mind as a really evocative mid-winter tale. Then, unfortunately, the bad. I must say that I have yet to be convinced by either William Hope Hodgson or Clark Ashton Smith. These authors are both new to me (although obviously I'd heard of CAS before), but I haven't enjoyed their stories so far - especially disappointing for a titan of the genre like CAS. I trust that you're on to something with these two, though, so I'll keep reading in the hopes that we get to some stories more to my taste. I was also a bit disappointed by the Machen stories, which just didn't do as much for me as the other stories of his I've read in the past. I'm not going to dwell on the negative, though, and I think I've probably said my piece about various themes in my posts here. Overall it's been a great year, and even the stories I didn't enjoy I don't regret having read. Here's to a great 2020 - I'm really excited for what's coming up! Oh, and one last thing. Glenn, I'm not just saying this as your friend, but I've read quite a few of your stories, and none of them have prose anywhere near as bad as Smith's in "The Door to Saturn", so you don't have anything to worry about on that front!