beaconatnight's reviews
247 reviews

The audio play 1983 is fully committed to the ongoing trend of Stephen King and 1980s inspired horror in the vein of Stranger Things and It. Since I don't tire of this at the moment, I thought this was going to be good fun. Due to spot-on writing and a stellar voice cast, Ivar Leon Menger's 1983 was actually much better than I would have expected. Beginning with Day 1, the plot fully captivated my attention until the much revealing yet quite cliffhanger-y final act.

There had been surprisingly many deaths in the small town of Harmony Bay. Sheriff Cody, who only recently relocated to the backwater village, soon finds that there must be a serial killer on the lose. He kills his victim in a particularly gruesome manner, though his killing pattern or the connection between the victims is far from obvious. Suits from the government make their appearance, a Russian spy master of disguise is on the run, and the mayor and his brother-in-law, the owner of the local sawmill, are involved in some sort of conspiracy, too. Yet the real secret may be much darker than that.

You may say that we had this small-town, kids on BMX bikes setting way to often in the past few years, but for me this still somehow stood out. And not only because this is an audio play, as opposed to a TV show or the big screen. It's amazing how tastefully it spins its mysteries over the course of the entire season (and beyond). Personally, I often really couldn't tell where this would be going. Though the reveals may not always be awesome, there are always twists and spins that add a surprising punch to the outcomes.

To enter spoiler territory, I loved how more supernatural elements were introduced only very late in the stories. Because of this, I actually rooted with more down-to-earth explanations for quite some time. Even when the fortuneteller begins to talk of this Nachtmahr, I thought it must be a distraction. The ending, with the foreboding mystery about the cave, the recurring dreams, and Amy's shocking involvement in the killings, was oh so very satisfying. I wouldn't have thought that this would end with me longing for more.

The production value of this show is absolutely phenomenal, too. There were some moments that quite disturbed me, like when Amy suddenly shoots Mr Briggs, it almost gave me a heart-attack! The voice of every single character is well-chosen, including the kids. What I loved is how they actually felt like kids from the 80s. It's not only the mention of Nike, Sony's Walkman, The Fog, or the A-Team, they say things like "Mückenpisse" or are a bit rough in their friendship (like when they are pushing around the fat kid). It's only very rarely that it's too much on-the-nose. Nice touches, like the discussion of the ethical trolley problem, well round off the genuinely strong dialogs.

If you are not yet fed up with this kind of horror material and you enjoy audio plays, I can only very much recommend this! I'll get into Season 2 soon, I hope it can keep up its high quality. When it comes to audio plays, it probably doesn't get much better than this.

Rating: 4/5

The events depicted in "MS. Found in a Bottle" (1833) – only Poe's second publication – are difficult to fathom, but there's the clear air of supernatural catastrophe.

The narrator is a well-read scholar on board of a ship that set out from Batavia (nowadays's Jakarta, Indonesia). When hit by a severe hurricane his entire crew goes overboard. As the ship floats southwards wondrous things happen as the aurora of the polar nights grace the sky. It suddenly crushes into a black galleon and the narrator finds himself thrown on board of this other ship. For all we know it's a ghost ship, since none of the passengers appear to take notice of the stowaway. By the end, the ship is pulled into a vast vortex at the center of Antarctica.

To my mind this is the kind of story that wants to be experienced rather than analyzed. Still, the experience is charged with further meaning when you realize (or like me, are made to realize by reading articles online) the symbolism and themes that Poe weaved into the story. For one thing, there is the popular legend of the Flying Dutchman of which there are reported sightings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ending also tells us something about the nature of the world, as the message in the bottle is probably meant to evidence the Hollow Earth hypothesis according to which the poles are connected by an inner passage.

On an intellectual level, I don't think I'll vividly remember the tale in the future. Alas, my acquaintance with the sea is more than limited (in this respect I'm like Poe himself). So, where the narrative sets out to conjure up images of the raving sea and ghostly sailors, my mind struggles to go beyond the most cartoonish abominations. It was still fun, nonetheless.

"A Descent into the Maelström" was more darkly picturesque. The narrator tells us of an old man he met during his travels in Norway. After they've reached the summit of a Lofoten mountain, we learn that the second narrator only appears to be old. It was on a fishing trip with his brothers a few years ago that immensely straining events changed his outer appearance and made him so very weary of life.

The horror entirely comes from the vivid descriptions of the whirling forces of nature. The brothers partook in a journey on sea when their ship was hit by a hurricane. Everything around them was pulled into the vortex, and the bigger the objects (and depending on their geometrical shape) the more relentless the suction effect. Unlike his maddened brothers, he is somehow able to save himself by bravely jumping into the Maelström. He tells us of the somber beauty he eventually registered in the horrifying events, and Poe's story well conveys the sentiments.

"The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" is an obvious predecessor to modern science fiction. If you've read any of Jules Verne's more scientific novels (as Verne himself dubbed them) you will be familiar with the way that speculation can figure in traditional adventure stories. To these learned men there are few things as exciting as seeing and exploring the world with literate sophistication. In the end, the ideas themselves become the subject of their explorations.

Could there be anything more exciting than discourses within the scientific societies in the thriving intellectual climate of the 18th and 19th century? Seeing how these old-established reading rooms are portrayed in cinematic period pieces (as recently in The Pale Blue Eye), it does make me long for older times when there appears to have been more seriousness and dignity to the scientific endeavor. I'm sure these are the circles that inspired Poe and Verne for their works and they have been their audiences.

For the modern reader the tales can be dull. I appreciate the detail with which the events are given the livery of realism. They suggest they could be accurate and feasible. Yet, much of the things that Hans Pfaall does on his nineteen-days balloon journey to the moon went over my head. In his first-person report he describes the material he uses, the challenges he overcame, the events that made him wonder. To me the import of his words often remained inaccessible.

At times his hypotheses are amusing even to the layman, though. For instance, he conjectures that there is no vacuum, or at least that there is none between the Earth and his extra-terrestrial destination. Rather than some border, it's assumed that the air pressure continuously decreases. So you only had to acclimate to the changing atmosphere – we are not used to it, but he'll be fine!

The exertions he has to endure until then are described quite graphically. It's among the more memorable moments (maybe because there is finally something happening outside the realm of ideas) when he reports his massive headaches and the blood coming from his nose, ears, and even eyes. He has to act, and cuts open a vein to ease the pressure. Finally some action in what has thus far been a rather uneventful journey.

As you might have expected, it doesn't last. There are other instances of problem-solving, though, and since The Martian we know that this can make for the most entertaining form of science fiction. He poses an exercise for the reader: If you have to wake up every hour to work the compressor to produce breathable air, how would you go about? Notice that there hadn't been any alarm clocks, yet. Solution: He uses a jar and made water drip into it. He can then calibrate the process so that it corresponds to an hour, making it a literal chronometer (a measure of time). The water will overrun from the vessel whenever it's time for him to get to work.

He poses other questions to himself. For instance, why is it that even so high the Earth still appears flat? Poe presents the reader with the geometrical explanation of the illusorily perceived concavity. I'm fascinated by the possibility of applying a priori knowledge in this way, but in narrational terms it doesn't really make for a thrilling read. The finale is the best example for anticlimactic storytelling. He did arrive on the moon – or were the events all fabricated in an elaborate hoax (a theme we will return to)? – and he did meet its alien inhabitants. He even sends one of them home to deliver his message. But to learn more about them the astronomers addressed by his letter would have to support him financially and pardon him for the crimes he committed. Pay-walled content, now that's some forward thinking!

This kind of narrative in book-length form gets increasingly dull – I would know because I tried to make it through Verne's From the Earth to the Moon – but in short form it exerted some surprising fascination. Maybe it's a genre that should be revived in modern science fiction and by applying the modern understanding of the world. I wonder whether the genre died out because modern-day science left its adventurous roots too far behind.

In the 1830s there had been sightings of numerous comets, including Halley's, Encke's, Lexell's and Biela's. There was genuine fear among the North American population that this might cause the end of the world. In fact, apocalyptic tales of Scripture had often been associated with cosmic impacts.

I was intrigued by how, in the story, the scientific and the religious perspective on the approaching comet (quite symbolically) compete against each other. The self-acclaimed sober mind observes the phenomenon and ascribes "historical attributes" to the celestial body; it's able to convince the masses to take an equally distancing attitude. But the more it manifests itself in the firmament, the more the people are under the spell and terror of impending doom just as preached by clergymen.

Maybe it's no coincidence that death itself plays a crucial role within the story. In the framing narrative, a person now called Eiros is identified as a victim of the apocalypse. Not only was this a pretty cool plug for the tale, it might suggest to us that the comet can be perceived as impending death. No matter what the intrepid philosophers of your day might say, the closer you get to the end, the more the passions and fears might win over reason.

As an amusing embellishment, it's said that the people face their death elated, later explained by reference to the increasing dominance of pure oxygen in the atmosphere. Actually, that too is similar to how many people spend their final hours.

People think of Augustus Bedloe, the protagonist of the tale of the Ragged Mountains, as a rather curious individual. The poor young man – or is he really young? – suffers from neuralgia, and his condition is slowly getting worse. He's under the medical care of Doctor Templeton who treats him by the magnetizing hypnosis associated with mesmerism (further discussed below).

Bedloe enjoys his walks in the Ragged Mountains. With sensual awareness heightened by his addiction to morphine he gets lost on tracks unknown to any human being before him. Or at least so he thinks, but before long he comes across a lively city that appears as if taken from The Arabian Nights. He suddenly finds himself in furious pandemonium before being killed by an arrow in his temples. His soul leaves his body before he rematerializes at an earlier stage in his journey. Later the doctor reports that he was there – in the Indian city of Benares, in decades prior – when exactly this happened to a man who strongly resembled Bedloe.

I highly enjoyed the ambiguity of it all. Bedloe lay down to rest at just the spot where later he rematerializes after his apparent death, so it's likely that his exciting events were nothing but a dream. Maybe Bedloe's experiences were caused by the drugs. Or maybe he somehow inherited the memories from his doctor through their close mesmeric connection. Likewise, it's not unlikely that the grieving doctor wanted to meet the man again, mistaking strong resemblance for identity. Whatever the real cause for his experiences, the events themselves make for a thrilling story in themselves.

"The Balloon-Hoax" is so called because it originally appeared as a newspaper article (published in The Sun) reporting straight matters of fact. The event depicted were debunked as fiction only two days later. Still, what Poe presents here is described in such extraordinary technical and historical detail that it could just as well have been true.

Some aspects of the article are historically accurate. For instance, Monck Mason is a real figure in the history of aerial navigation, famous for his balloon expedition from London to Weilburg. The ballon in the story is said to use coal gas, a cheap and easily obtainable resource introduced to aviation by the balloonist Charles Green. And the main part of the newly constructed vehicle, an Archimedean screw, apparently would sustain the endeavor (even though I have to admit that the real workings go over my head).

The narrative takes into consideration the principles behind weight and ascend in aviation – important factors like dew upon the silk or expanding gas caused by the sun. It also explains how the use of a guide rope was a simple yet brilliant method to overcome many issues of would-be travellers. For one thing, ascent and descent can counteracted by the length of the rope (I think). It's also used for measuring the velocity, direction, and course of the vehicle. Naturally, the greater the angle, the quicker the balloon (though I would be hard-pressed if you asked me to explain the difference between the latter concepts).

As for the journey itself (reported by the fictional journal of Mason), I found it more captivating than the similar yet rather dull account in the first story. As the story is told, it was only halfway to Paris that the crew of eight passengers decided to aim for North America. (Well, six men ruled by the despotism of the majority vote.) The account is at times interrupted by expressing the grandeur of the moment. I felt it was kind of soothing to read the purported first-hand account, mainly because of the absence of any real danger: "We have an abundance of gas to take us across this small pond, even should the voyage last three weeks. I have not the slightest fear for the result. The difficulty has been strangely exaggerated and misapprehended."

Poe had been infuriated by the fact that The Sun made a good amount of money with an article that, to his mind, was plagiarizing his story about Hans Pfaall (later known as the "Great Moon Hoax"). I'm glad they still collaborated, though I don't know whether it was his intention to expose the paper once again.

In the history of science the discovery of magnetism is quite remarkable. Naturalist were struck by certain observable phenomena (like the behavior of compasses) that lead to the postulation of magnetic fields which themselves are not perceivable with our senses. In the 19th century only few educated men would deny the existence of these fields, especially after the famous experiment conducted by Hans Christian Ørsted demonstrated the relationship between magnetism and electricity.

It's a curious quality of the scientific method that once a theoretical entity is firmly established it can be used to explain new observations. The German doctor Franz Mesmer proposed that similar fields proceeded from living beings and that they could be leveraged for healing and diagnosis in form in hypnosis. The theory was variously dubbed animal magnetism or mesmerism and modern-day readers might be surprised to learn that it was highly influential during Poe's lifetime.

As the title explicitly suggests, it figured prominently in his "Mesmeric Revelation" (1844). While many of its premises are dubious to say the least, the narrator remarks to the contrary that in his present day no one would deny mesmerism. Notwithstanding, the philosophical dispute about life after death and the nature of God remains fascinating to this day.

The story depicts a conversation that a hypnotist (as the mesmeric practitioners were called) has with his consumptive patient. If I understand the setting correctly, then this suggested state of mind allows the patient deeper self knowledge and he is able to communicate his experiences to his doctor. The doctor, who is the narrator of the story, is forthright with the reader that he couldn't save the man. Still, as magnetism keeps his consciousness alive beyond the threshold of death, he is able to give unique testament of the other side.

While the short story presents itself as a fictional tale, with themes familiar from Poe's general oeuvre, it does take the exchange of reasons and arguments seriously. Or maybe that's not an accurate way to put this. The dying himself admits that he tried to solve the existential mysteries by use of reason and by reading the philosophers of his day (Victor Cousin is explicitly mentioned). He came to the conclusion that no arguing would ever convince him about the immortality of the soul one way or another. What he now experiences is first-hand insight into the metaphysical realm.

Naturally, the doctor takes up this opportunity to prompt him about many of the issues that bothered the great minds. They talk about the nature of matter and how even the Mind was matter in another sense. He claims to have discovered that the individual Mind was undividable matter and that all animals (including humanity) were thoughts in the Mind that was God (a theme that recurs in "The Power of Words"). He argues that the idea of inferiority of matter as compared to the spiritual was a misunderstanding based on misconceived notions.

He also talks about the nature of our existence. He likens men to caterpillars and portrays death as the painful metamorphosis to another plain of existence. In this analogy the human individual somehow possessed two bodies, but that only the form after death was what eventually matters. In his current mesmeric consciousness he was already aware of what we would see after this transition and that we will be able to witness the things as they are in themselves. Suffering was somehow the necessary prerequisite for the happiness to come.

As you might have realized, it's very esoteric stuff. Much of it reads like Scholastic theology. It's still entertaining, though, for its coherence and the noticeably darker touch. However, it was still a bit dull, as fascination with metaphysics hinges on the assumption that reason somehow compels us to ask questions that our limited minds cannot answer. Yet, Mesmerism would cheat the finiteness of human existence and disparage divine questions to the easily answerable.

P.S.: As far as I'm concerned, the philosophical spirit was the essence of the tale. If you are more interested in the external circumstances of the conversation, you'll find it described in more detail in Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar".

In this short story, obviously mimicking the most-popular anthology of Middle Eastern folk tales, Poe approaches to the emerging science-fiction genre from a novel angle. After the original framing narrative is extended to incorporate the possibility of further stories, Scheherazade recounts the eight voyage of Sinbad. It's every bit as fantastical as the more famous tales. The only difference is that the reader will eventually realize that the discoveries and events depicted are all real.

Throughout the King comments on the absurdity of it all. I have to admit, initially I was very much with him. The colorful prose describes the events in terms reminiscent of the Islamic Golden Age. It was only when Sinbad came to talk about the mountain with its melted metal and thick ashen smoke that it dawned on me that he's talking about a volcano. What we were handed down from antiquity are cases of the truth being stranger than fiction, as Poe forthrightly puts it at the very beginning.

When Sinbad arrives in the country of his hosts – bizarre human-like creatures that travel on the back of a giant whose slaves they are – he finds the most capable magicians. Within the science-fiction community, there is the common doctrine tirelessly preached that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and this is what happens here. These include technologies as seemingly mundane as electricity (via the voltaic pile), photography (via the daguerréotype) or the electrical telegraph, but Sinbad also discovers what is essentially Babbage's calculating machine (an early predecessor of the digital computer) and the chess-playing "Mechanical Turk" makes an appearance (as it does in other stories of Poe's). Newton's most meticulous measurements are referenced and Sinbad is shown other experiments common in Natural Philosophy. They are so learned that they know that many of the heavenly bodies visible in the night sky are in fact extinguished for a very long time.

The author – I'm not sure if it was the fictional narrator or Poe himself – furnished the text with references to his sources and explains some occurrences in more details and in more scientific terms. It seems hardly necessary. In the present age, many wonders of even Poe's days have become so common that we hardly even notice them. To my mind, the story's main merit is that it reminds us of the wonders in the seemingly mundane.

In "Some Words with a Mummy" Poe openly mocks the pride that his compatriots took in their progressive thinking and technological advancements. Educated men are now pushed off their high horse after they used galvanization to bring back a mummy from the dead.

In Poe's day, people were fascinated by the polytheism and death cults of Ancient Egypt. They were amazed by their awe-inspiring creations and their scientific knowledge, yet of course they regarded their own civilization as highly superior. Allamistakeo teaches them about the real extent of his people's knowledge. Not only did men of his day live for about a thousand years, they were able to preserve the body so that they could go to sleep for centuries and return later. He emphasizes that their perceived paganism was in fact a monotheism whose different deities represent aspects of the one true God. And their technology and architecture – the Americans cannot even begin to image their glory!

Compared to some of the very dense other works collected here, the first story ever to be published on a revived mummy (a popular trope later on) is a surprisingly light read. Its themes won't blow your mind, but it's written in an elegant prose that doesn't take itself too seriously. An approach that renders the story simply enjoyable, a trait I wouldn't attribute to many of Poe's writings.

In the beginning was the Word. Notwithstanding the interpretational issues of this notoriously difficult statement of biblical metaphysics, it's fairly certain that the opening passage of the Gospel of John is about creation. The subject of yet another conversation in the afterlife is about the exact sense of divine inception.

If you take the Bible literally, then God created humanity, animals, plants, and things of numerous other kinds. Agathos thinks this is mistaken: "In the beginning only, he created [i.e., as opposed to later creative intervention]. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power." Things come into existence and turn into what they essentially are by natural processes that follow the laws of nature or by the creation of free agents.

Naturally, it was God who gave the first impetus and who defined the laws of the universe. Agathos add an additional belief in strict determinism. To his mind its obvious that the one effect follows its cause with certainty. According to him, it's for this reason that mathematicians and scientists (in the days that he wandered the Earth) were able to predict developments with high confidence. However, from here it's not difficult to imagine a being whose algebraic powers are capable to follow the chain into even further futures – or back to the very beginning.

It's often observed that John 1:1's word is a translation of the highly ambiguous Greek logos, which might very reasonably be rendered as reason. So, in the beginning there was reason, the all-powerful reasoner. So, to make a highly Aristotelian point, in Agathos's picture God would see back into the very beginning and thereby think itself. Even God's power is limited, though: He might not forget, but Agathos emphasizes that never would his knowledge of things be complete, as this would make eternity quite boring (is this the argument?). There is an infinity of facts for God to think, so to say.

Unlike some of Poe's other philosophical writings, even as a non-believer I found this dialog highly engaging.