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The CD of the HPLHS' Dagon: War of the Worlds arrived last night, and they're outdoing themselves. As you may be able to guess from the title, it's one of their pseudo-1930s radio adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft. This one starts out as a deliberately lack-lustre version of "Dagon" which is quickly interrupted by news reports of a ferryboat sinking in San Francisco. soon all hell has broken loose and we're in the middle of an unofficial sequel to The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Olmstead, the Marsh family and other Innsmouth folk lead a prison break, while an atoll rises out of the South Pacific. HPLHS' original characters Nate Ward and Charlie Tower show up, the latter flying a private airship nicknamed "the Mercury of the Air" (ha). We briefly listen to Ramón Raquello and his Orchestra.
Note that the story does imply, a tad worryingly, that the Americans team up with a nazi u-boat, because the Germans have known there's something under the sea since WWI and the events of "The Temple," and because swastikas, as a solar symbol, are canonically anathema to the Deep Ones. The American reporter's reaction to this is the rather sensible "wait, so apart from everything else that's going on, the Reich has broken the treaty of Versailles and rebuilt their navy?"
Note that the story does imply, a tad worryingly, that the Americans team up with a nazi u-boat, because the Germans have known there's something under the sea since WWI and the events of "The Temple," and because swastikas, as a solar symbol, are canonically anathema to the Deep Ones. The American reporter's reaction to this is the rather sensible "wait, so apart from everything else that's going on, the Reich has broken the treaty of Versailles and rebuilt their navy?"
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Date: 2015-09-01 10:17 pm (UTC)From:I wonder whether I will love the storyline, hate it or what. I've always been so happy to take the end of "The Shadow over Innsmouth" at face value that I kind of resent anyone else's presenting it as horror. Including Lovecraft himself, I should add. As far as I'm concerned, the amphibian people are the heroes, I identify with them completely, and I reject any attempt to tell me otherwise. I will have my moment of fish-man radical self-acceptance, and treasure it as redemptive.
...Just don't let Olmstead be used as a one-dimensional pulp villain, that's all I ask. I may or may not be working on a short story right now that deals with some similar stuff, so this is good timing for me.
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Date: 2015-09-01 11:22 pm (UTC)From:I think to an extent they're trying to balance the portrayal of Olmstead and the fish-people between good and evil -- Olmstead makes an angry speech against humanity, saying he and the Deep Ones would not have harmed the surface world if they hadn't started it; but the Marshes feel somewhat differently on the topic.
Also, I think I misunderstood and the nazi sub contained cultists attempting to help Cthuhlu and the Deep Ones; effectively the show ends with the supernatural danger over, but Nate Ward et al. realizing the real danger to the world may be from humans.
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Date: 2015-09-01 11:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
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Date: 2015-09-02 01:30 pm (UTC)From:...and omg that took me a minute but what a perfect emoticon. ~;;;~