So I'm writing this immediately after listening to one of the most recent episodes of a great horror fiction podcast, Pseudopod. I've been enjoying (and occasionally, freaking out to) Pseudopod for over two years now, which means I've heard well over 100 horror stories read to me for absolutely free. I first subscribed after hearing a reading of a Joe Lansdale story, "The Pit," which is gut-wrenching, horrible, very disturbing and, like a lot of Lansdale's work, genre-bending.
Through the eerie hand of pure coincidence, this podcast is co-edited by a friend of a friend, which I didn't know until he hosted an episode. "Fishhead," by Irvin S. Cobb, was published in 1913 and is open and honest about the racial politics of the time. The story is, of course, problematic in its treatment of race (though in a different way from the Lansdale story above), but I feel like Alex helps us put the story, and Cobb, into context.
The episode of Pseudopod which has haunted me the most is their 400th, "The Screwfly Solution" by James Tiptree, Jr. I'm mostly self-educated when it comes to horror and all other forms of speculative fiction, so I hadn't heard of Tiptree before. This story laid so many eggs in my head - sexual politics, biological imperatives -- I had to share a link on Facebook with my closest friends, and I immediately reserved a Tiptree collection at the library on the strength of that story. (There's a TV adaptation of this story, which I never bothered to seek out.)
Which brings us to this week (well, a few weeks ago -- due to a vacation, I'm still behind on my podcast listening). Frequently, they publish collections of several shorter stories, and the theme of this episode is great: using proper language to distance oneself from horror. Frequently, the editorial tone of the show as a whole can be very Nightvalian (to coin a term), and the second story especially uses the humor of incongruous language to both mask and deepen the horrors so obliquely described. I'm a comedy guy, and feel like humor can deepen most forms of storytelling. For me, that goes double with horror (which is why I'm such a big Lansdale fan).
This is by no means a complete or even representative overview of the show, just a collection of the episodes I remember liking the most over the last few years. If you have any interest in horror fiction, it's well worth your time to trawl through the archives (their Artemis Rising shows are also astounding) and find something that catches your eye.
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