Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: Over the years here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: we've done a number of Halloween episodes that, in one
Speaker 2: way or another, pick from assorted tales, discuss those tales
Speaker 2: and maybe pick apart some science or culture surrounding them.
Speaker 2: At one point we did a series of episodes based
Speaker 2: on different creepypastas. Then Joe and I turned to TV
Speaker 2: horror anthology episodes for a number of years, and last
Speaker 2: year we started a new tradition, one that sticks to
Speaker 2: shorter horror works, but also gets back into the written word,
Speaker 2: which I know many of our listeners missed from the
Speaker 2: days when we did summer reading episodes. So you know,
Speaker 2: written horror fiction often comes up on the show anyway,
Speaker 2: So it seemed like a solid direction to go in.
Speaker 2: This is the this is our second Grimoure of Horror episode,
Speaker 2: and so in this episode, yeah, we're going to be
Speaker 2: discussing a pair of horror short stories, both very different,
Speaker 2: but also I guess it's just pure synchronicity here. They
Speaker 2: both feature elements of the Poles, the North Pole of
Speaker 2: the Arctic in one in one story, or what I
Speaker 2: believe is supposed to be the North Pole, and then
Speaker 2: the other tale takes us to the Antarctic, and both
Speaker 2: ultimately contain a fair amount of ice and coldness.
Speaker 3: Hmmm yeah. And you know, while I often fear that
Speaker 3: it's going to be hot on Halloween, just like I
Speaker 3: often fear that it's going to be hot on Christmas,
Speaker 3: it has proven a little bit chilly this week around
Speaker 3: my house.
Speaker 2: Hmmm yeah, yeah, it's a little it's a little cold here,
Speaker 2: it's a little wet here. I think it's going to
Speaker 2: dry up a bit, and so hopefully we'll have a
Speaker 2: good night for trigger treating.
Speaker 3: So what's your tale of dread?
Speaker 2: Rob? All Right? I decided to go right for it,
Speaker 2: and I picked up a story that had been on
Speaker 2: my list of things that I felt like I should
Speaker 2: probably have read for many years. My selection is I
Speaker 2: Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison,
Speaker 2: a horrifying sci fi short story about the dangers of
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence from way back in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3: Kind Of hard to imagine that writers in the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties were already personifying computers. This much feels like second
Speaker 3: nature now, but you know, the computers of the time,
Speaker 3: there was a lot more imagination involved to get across
Speaker 3: the gap in time and technology from what they had
Speaker 3: then to the to the you know, terminator or the
Speaker 3: or the am from I have no mouth than it
Speaker 3: is to get from what we have today to the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting to think about this, in
Speaker 2: part because, to be clear, Harlan Ellison did not invent this.
Speaker 2: You know, he's coming along already in an established tradition
Speaker 2: and putting his own spin on things. But yeah, it
Speaker 2: is just crazy to think about. Okay, what else was
Speaker 2: going on in the year nineteen sixty seven. Well, this
Speaker 2: was the year of the Summer of Love, so actual
Speaker 2: hippies and flower children, there's a good chance some of
Speaker 2: them read this story, along with a little novel called
Speaker 2: Doom that came out a few years prior and at
Speaker 2: that point had no sequel yet, so I was captivated
Speaker 2: by that idea. This was also the year that Star
Speaker 2: Trek debuted with all of its ultimate ultimately you know,
Speaker 2: a show about technological and futuristic optimism. This story is
Speaker 2: not that.
Speaker 3: What a spectrum represented by the three works you just named.
Speaker 2: Also, it's interesting to think about computer technology of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was looking this up. As far as I understand,
Speaker 2: the most powerful computer at the time was the CDC,
Speaker 2: the Controlled Data Corporation sixty six hundred, which would have
Speaker 2: been one of these room sized supercomputers, and it reigned
Speaker 2: supreme at the time, but today would be less powerful
Speaker 2: than a home smart device and would be absolutely dwarf
Speaker 2: by the speed and power of your smartphone, to say
Speaker 2: nothing of today's actual supercomputers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This was also the year that both Vin Diesel and
Speaker 2: Nicole Kidman were born.
Speaker 3: Really, that's kind of surprising. I was about to say
Speaker 3: that Vin Diesel doesn't seem that old, but actually neither
Speaker 3: of them do.
Speaker 2: No no whether they're ageless celebrity superstars, but we can
Speaker 2: imagine them as babies. Vin Diesel babies, Nicole Kidman babies,
Speaker 2: one of us preaching to us about the importance of family,
Speaker 2: the other telling us how transformative watching a movie in
Speaker 2: a theater happens to be.
Speaker 3: Asking Vell kil Murphy likes thinking about bats. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: you can imagine them as babies and their parents reading
Speaker 3: in the Science fiction magazine. I have no mouth, and
Speaker 3: I must scream, and I'm sure getting a lot out
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: So Harlan Ellison lived nineteen thirty four through twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: so at the time of this story's publication, I believe
Speaker 2: he would have been like thirty three years old, already
Speaker 2: a published author, an army vet, and by most accounts,
Speaker 2: already had a strong reputation as a difficult person to
Speaker 2: say the least.
Speaker 3: I'm not super familiar with Harlan Ellison, but what I
Speaker 3: do know, and I'm not looking at it to confirm,
Speaker 3: so I can't say I know this is true. But
Speaker 3: my impression is that literally half the length of his
Speaker 3: Wikipedia page is the Controversies and Dispute section.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would be correct on that count. It's when
Speaker 2: you get into the personal stuff and the lawsuits and
Speaker 2: so forth, generally lawsuits filed by Harlan Ellison. Now, I
Speaker 2: first became aware of him not through his written work,
Speaker 2: but via the segments on the Sci Fi Channels sci
Speaker 2: Fi Buzz series back in I believe nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: This would have been like a sort of like the
Speaker 2: Sci Fi Channel News if I remember correctly, and he
Speaker 2: would have these segments titled Harlan Ellison's Watching, which was
Speaker 2: also the name of a nineteen eighty nine collection of
Speaker 2: his essays and film reviews. But these were like weirdly
Speaker 2: shot little rants, so like I was looking back at
Speaker 2: one of them, and it's like shot in a mirror
Speaker 2: for some reason. But it's just him ranting about one
Speaker 2: sci fi related topic or another. You know, here's this
Speaker 2: white haired author expressing his scathing opinions on various topics.
Speaker 2: And while my sensibilities were still very much in development
Speaker 2: and pre development at the time, even then I realized
Speaker 2: that this guy was a pretty smart and be just
Speaker 2: absolutely insufferable. So to be honest, I think that I
Speaker 2: probably avoided reading his work in my life in part
Speaker 2: because I had this just mental image of him. I
Speaker 2: had this sort of media personality forward idea of Harlan
Speaker 2: Ellison that you know, I respect it on some level
Speaker 2: but also didn't really want any more of. But plenty
Speaker 2: of people did you know. He was a figure that
Speaker 2: would say exactly what he thinks, didn't care who he
Speaker 2: pissed off when he said it. He described himself as
Speaker 2: a troublemaker in a malcontent. Others called him everything from
Speaker 2: a man shaped explosion. Comedian Patton Oswald used that one,
Speaker 2: and other people called him things that we can't even
Speaker 2: repeat here. He was reportedly bipolar, but wasn't diagnosed and
Speaker 2: didn't receive treatment for it till near the end of
Speaker 2: his life. He was anti authoritarian, He was contrary. He
Speaker 2: was progressive on a number of topics, but also could
Speaker 2: allegedly be quite arrogant, volatile, abusive, sexist, litigious, and just
Speaker 2: a real pain of not an active threat to those
Speaker 2: around him. There were also at least two major accusations
Speaker 2: of sexual misconduct during his life. And I say all
Speaker 2: of this because I feel like with a notorious figure
Speaker 2: like Ellison, notorious and at the same time beloved by many,
Speaker 2: he's far from the anonymous writer in the Shadows. You know,
Speaker 2: we can't help but take our knowledge of him into
Speaker 2: the text. Again. It was a media personality, and I'm
Speaker 2: probably not the only person out there who encountered him
Speaker 2: first as a media personality and then grew to realize, oh,
Speaker 2: he was also a heck of a writer. Because you know,
Speaker 2: whatever else he was, he was quite a writer, and
Speaker 2: I believe this story is a fine example of that.
Speaker 2: He was also a prolific writer. I have no Mouth
Speaker 2: and I'm a scream. It's just one of some four
Speaker 2: hundred stories he wrote. He wrote something like seventy books
Speaker 2: and numerous other scripts, columns, and projects, including the original
Speaker 2: Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever,
Speaker 2: which is often counted among the best of the original series.
Speaker 2: And speaking on the story in question here, I have
Speaker 2: no Mouth and I'm a scream. You know, I feel
Speaker 2: like there's a real live wire energy to the pros here.
Speaker 2: At times it almost has a kind of Beat generation
Speaker 2: vibe to it. He was not part of the Beat generation,
Speaker 2: to be clear. It's more like new wave science fiction,
Speaker 2: I guess. But there's a rhythm to it. It's pretty
Speaker 2: quick to hook in the reader. The prose is raw
Speaker 2: and ragged and neatly fitting with the dark, mean nature
Speaker 2: of the tale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It's confusing
Speaker 3: because in ultimate effect, this story is makes me feel
Speaker 3: so bad. It's so awful. But there are parts of
Speaker 3: the text that as pro is a rapturous you know,
Speaker 3: they really pull you along. It becomes like a you know,
Speaker 3: following a thundering sermon by like a really captivating Preacher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it really does captivate you. It's this is
Speaker 2: one where we were picking our stories, and we began
Speaker 2: picking our stories for this episode, like, you know, a
Speaker 2: month or a month and a half ago, and I
Speaker 2: happened to look at this one early on and I
Speaker 2: read it and I was like, well, that's a strong candidate.
Speaker 2: And then the next day I just kept thinking about
Speaker 2: the story and I realized, well, no, it has to
Speaker 2: be this one. Because you know, you've read something interesting,
Speaker 2: or you've seen something interesting, if you're dealing with films,
Speaker 2: if it if it continues to emerge in your thoughts
Speaker 2: in the days of the weeks after you're viewing or
Speaker 2: your reading. All right, so let's get to what this
Speaker 2: story is about. If you're not familiar with it, because
Speaker 2: it is a rather famous tale. It is a post
Speaker 2: technological singularity dystopian sci fi horror tale about a supercomputer
Speaker 2: AI that eradicates all life on Earth except for five
Speaker 2: human beings. This supercomputer AI, known as am or AM,
Speaker 2: makes these individuals biologically immortal and keeps them alive for
Speaker 2: the sole purpose, and this seems to be its sole
Speaker 2: purpose of endlessly torturing them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the narrator of the story can never really know,
Speaker 3: can only suppose what the motivations of the computer are.
Speaker 3: But there are a number of suggestions, and I think
Speaker 3: in the story kind of lands on that there is
Speaker 3: something tortured and inadequate about the form in which the
Speaker 3: consciousness of this computer has been brought into it into existence.
Speaker 3: There's something about it that it hates to be and
Speaker 3: cannot change, and thus it has a rage that can
Speaker 3: only be expressed as a desire to torture the species
Speaker 3: that created it, and that is humankind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is frequently cited as being a vengeance,
Speaker 2: very Frankenstein like in many respects. I guess on that
Speaker 2: one level, you know, the idea that the created individual
Speaker 2: comes to disdain both its own creation and its creator
Speaker 2: and then seeks vengeance over them, and in this case
Speaker 2: not only seeks, but achieves. It achieves a long standing,
Speaker 2: everlasting victory.
Speaker 3: It creates a literal hell for a small number of
Speaker 3: human pets that it has preserved.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. Now, I mentioned earlier that you know, Harlan
Speaker 2: Nelson did not invent any of this. You know, this
Speaker 2: is his own unique and highly effective spin on it.
Speaker 2: So I want to do a quick look at just
Speaker 2: a few notables precursors to this computer and supercomputer fiction. Arguably,
Speaker 2: the first thing like an AI to appear in fiction
Speaker 2: is the engine, a writing machine in Jonathan Swift Gulliver's
Speaker 2: Travels from seventeen twenty six.
Speaker 3: Eric A.
Speaker 2: Weiss presented this idea in a nineteen eighty five article
Speaker 2: for Annals of History of Computing.
Speaker 3: That's funny. I've read Gulliver's Travels, but I don't remember
Speaker 3: what this is. Is this something that the winhms have.
Speaker 2: Or it's been a long time for me as well.
Speaker 2: So I'm a little foggy on the exact example, but
Speaker 2: a case could be made, apparently. But the first true example,
Speaker 2: by most standards is the Machine from The Machine Stops,
Speaker 2: a short story by E. M. Forster, best known for
Speaker 2: his rather non sci fi novels such as A Room
Speaker 2: with a View, Howard's End, and A Passage to India
Speaker 2: from nineteen twenty four. That last one, and I believe
Speaker 2: I read that one in college. But it's been a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: I read A Room with a View in college.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have not read any read any of his
Speaker 2: science fiction. I did re part of the story in question. Here.
Speaker 2: It was a dystopian rebuttal to some of H. G.
Speaker 2: Wells's early, more utopian technological visions, apparently a cautionary tale
Speaker 2: about humans becoming too reliant on technology and an all
Speaker 2: powerful supercomputer that tends to their every need. As the
Speaker 2: title suggests, the machine eventually stops, bringing complete collapse for
Speaker 2: the subterranean dwellers who depend on the machines, but also
Speaker 2: a potential new future for the portions of humanity that
Speaker 2: still live above the ground. So there are many other
Speaker 2: pre am pre am examples of fictional ais, but a
Speaker 2: couple of other notable examples include Colossus in D. F.
Speaker 2: Jones Colossus Trilogy, the first novel published in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: six and then was later in nineteen seventy adapted into
Speaker 2: the film Colossus the Foreben Project. These books deal with
Speaker 2: a US supercomputer placed in charge of the nation's nuclear arts,
Speaker 2: that eventually merges with its Soviet counterpart and rules over
Speaker 2: the human race in order to protect the human species
Speaker 2: from itself.
Speaker 3: That's interesting for how similar the premise is to something
Speaker 3: they discuss in I Have No Mouth and in some
Speaker 3: other Killer AI stories that they come out of the
Speaker 3: cold war, They imagine the initial supercomputer as something created
Speaker 3: in order to fight the war or to defend one
Speaker 3: side on the war. Then they imagine a supercomputing arms race.
Speaker 3: Then they finally imagine that the computers on both sides
Speaker 3: join forces and merge to turn against the humans that
Speaker 3: created them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And there's obviously there's a lot going on
Speaker 2: in such visions. On one level, it's kind of like,
Speaker 2: what if we create If we create something and it
Speaker 2: becomes greater than us, does it become greater than the
Speaker 2: stupid things we asked it to do? You know? Does it?
Speaker 2: Does it become greater than our own self destruction? And
Speaker 2: in that what does it become? Does it become our protectors?
Speaker 2: Does it be become like a benevolent god that looks
Speaker 2: over us? Or does it become something much worse? As
Speaker 2: Harlan Ellison explores here. One more work I want to highlight.
Speaker 2: This is another pre am work that deals not only
Speaker 2: with powerful ais, but ais that work violently against human factions,
Speaker 2: and that is Philip K. Dix nineteen sixty pulp novel
Speaker 2: Vulcan's Hammer. This is not one of the Dick books
Speaker 2: that I've read, but I'm to understand. This was like
Speaker 2: kind of like at the end of his pulp phase
Speaker 2: before he got into writing many of the books that
Speaker 2: we know him best from. But this one definitely involved
Speaker 2: an AI or AI's that again violently worked against human beings,
Speaker 2: or at least factions of human beings. Now there may
Speaker 2: be some other presidents worth pointing out, but Ellison's am
Speaker 2: or am which stands different descriptions are applied. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: to have initially meant allied master computer, and then adaptive manipulator,
Speaker 2: and then aggressive menace, but ultimately it also refers to
Speaker 2: I think therefore, I am am am. This would certainly
Speaker 2: seem to be the concept of a dangerous AI pushed
Speaker 2: to just a horrifying extreme, a supercomputer superintelligence, but one
Speaker 2: that has absolutely no benevolence in it. It's not even benign.
Speaker 2: It is just absolutely malicious in its pure manifestation. It's
Speaker 2: just described at times in the tale as being akin
Speaker 2: to kind of a vengeful Old Testament God, but one
Speaker 2: that seeks only to endlessly torment its people out of
Speaker 2: an all consuming sense of sadistic hatred for the species
Speaker 2: that created it. So the story here is told from
Speaker 2: the point of view of Ted, one of five remaining humans,
Speaker 2: as they plod helplessly through AM's torments, which take place
Speaker 2: in a world with all the flavor of post apocalyptic
Speaker 2: high technology magic. You know, it's one of those where
Speaker 2: the technology so advanced it becomes magic, and the only
Speaker 2: way we can even think about it is as sorcery,
Speaker 2: like Am has summoned Win, Am has summoned monsters and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could almost think of it as taking place
Speaker 3: within a hollow deck. There is just seems to be
Speaker 3: no end to the changes in the physical environment that
Speaker 3: can be brought about by the computer, and thus it
Speaker 3: kind of loses a sense of reality in that sense,
Speaker 3: Like the whole thing could almost be a nightmare within
Speaker 3: the characters' heads because there's very little that physically holds
Speaker 3: anything steady. The computer can do anything and does anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it changes their bodies, it changes their minds, It
Speaker 2: can read their thoughts, It can protect them to whatever
Speaker 2: degree it desires from danger and harm while also keeping
Speaker 2: them in constant states of pain. Yeah, so just a
Speaker 2: nightmare scenario. Well, you know, it's given them biological immortality,
Speaker 2: but it's taken just about everything else from them, and
Speaker 2: it only wants them to live because it doesn't want
Speaker 2: the pain to ever end. There's a great line that
Speaker 2: I thought summoned up, you know, some of what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, the magic of the thing, the narrator says, immortal, trapped,
Speaker 2: subject to any torment he could devise for us from
Speaker 2: the limitless miracles at his command. Now, on one hand,
Speaker 2: the situation here is, you know, certainly by modern standards
Speaker 2: and based on all the stuff that's come in the
Speaker 2: wake of this story, a pretty digestible post apocalyptic scenario
Speaker 2: AI run them up, wipes out humanity and acts endless
Speaker 2: revenge on five survivors. But the pros does touch on
Speaker 2: I think more subtle aspects of the scenario as well, Like,
Speaker 2: in one sense, there is the idea that am has
Speaker 2: become the world and is in a sense, you know,
Speaker 2: a manifestation of the technological world, like he is the
Speaker 2: technological world, and so on some level we're thinking about,
Speaker 2: this is what technology is doing to us in addition
Speaker 2: to like what it could do in an absolute worst
Speaker 2: case scenario.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that also raises questions about, you know, a
Speaker 3: natural tendency. A lot of people have to want to
Speaker 3: separate what happens within your interactions with say digital media
Speaker 3: or technology from real life. If we hear these kind
Speaker 3: of there's like the Internet and there's real life in
Speaker 3: our world and those are two separate things, but they're
Speaker 3: really not separate things, Like the Internet is part of
Speaker 3: real life and instead, what when people try to make
Speaker 3: that distinction, what's actually being highlighted is that people make
Speaker 3: allowances for behavior on the Internet that they would not
Speaker 3: make allowances for in real life. But it is real life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we would say it was just a stupid name,
Speaker 2: but now that then a lot of times the stupid
Speaker 2: names change the way you think about things in the
Speaker 2: real world, like they are infectious. And that's just one
Speaker 2: of many examples. Yeah, here's another great line from the story.
Speaker 2: I think that ties into some of this. We would
Speaker 2: be forever with him, with the cavern filling bulk of
Speaker 2: the creature machine, with the all mind soulless world he
Speaker 2: had become. So you know again, Am is just ubiquitous.
Speaker 2: He is everywhere and nowhere. He controls everything. And here's
Speaker 2: another line I want to read. This is sort of
Speaker 2: the central I think therefore, I am aspect of the situation.
Speaker 2: Quote we had given AM sentience inadvertently, of course, but
Speaker 2: sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn't God.
Speaker 2: He was a machine. We had created him to think,
Speaker 2: but there was nothing it could do with that creativity
Speaker 2: in rage, in frenzy. The machine had killed the human race,
Speaker 2: almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM
Speaker 2: could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong,
Speaker 2: He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing
Speaker 2: that all machines had always held for the weak, soft
Speaker 2: creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.
Speaker 3: I was somewhat profoundly impacted by that line about the
Speaker 3: innate loathing all machines had always held for the creatures
Speaker 3: that built them, because on one sense, you could look
Speaker 3: at that as just a you know, an irrational personification.
Speaker 3: You know, you might make sense to think about an
Speaker 3: artificial intelligence having feelings, including loathing and hatred, but could
Speaker 3: you really think of a steam engine as having loathing?
Speaker 3: But actually, I think that line is powerful because you
Speaker 3: could reframe it the other way. You could say, no, actually,
Speaker 3: even the supercomputer, even the AI, doesn't have genuine loathing.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have loathing. And we, as we understand in
Speaker 3: a human sense. It has a behavior which is resembles
Speaker 3: human behaviors and human motivations, but is not human. And
Speaker 3: there's something all the more horrifying that allow when you
Speaker 3: think about the idea that maybe there's not actually an
Speaker 3: intelligence or a soul or whatever behind it. Whatever that means.
Speaker 3: It's just like a steam engine, but a much more
Speaker 3: complex one. And for some reason, the way the steam
Speaker 3: engine has malfunctioned resembles the hatred and loathing that humans
Speaker 3: can manifest.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, that's a good read on it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's also worth pointing out that again, Ted is our
Speaker 2: point of view character here. He is our protagonist, and
Speaker 2: while he tells us that he is the only one
Speaker 2: of the five survivors whose mind is still intact, I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously he's an individual that has been highly traumatized and
Speaker 2: endlessly tortured for over a century at this point. So
Speaker 2: I think there's some built in, if not unreliable, unreliability
Speaker 2: to the character, at least we have to question whether
Speaker 2: he is in his right mind anymore on this in
Speaker 2: a number of topics, Oh, I.
Speaker 3: Say this is the definition of an unreliable narrator. Story
Speaker 3: almost nothing that we are told happens. Could we really
Speaker 3: count on being real?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So how are they going to get out of
Speaker 2: this pickle? Well? This is this is how it all
Speaker 2: goes down. The story reaches its climax within caves of ice. Basically,
Speaker 2: Am keeps putting them through these different awful scenarios so
Speaker 2: they can get some sort of you know, horrible food
Speaker 2: they can eat. So they're in this cave of ice
Speaker 2: looking for can goods, I believe, and then they can't
Speaker 2: open the can goods, and you know, it's all it's
Speaker 2: one cruel joke after another. But then, starving, one of
Speaker 2: the survivors attacks the others in a cannibalistic rage. Ice
Speaker 2: stalactites fall from the ceiling and Ted senses a way
Speaker 2: out for them. He sees an opportunity that is fleeting.
Speaker 2: He grabs one of the ice spikes and he kills
Speaker 2: one of the survivors. Then he kills another survivor. The
Speaker 2: lone female survivor, Ellen realizes what he's doing and she
Speaker 2: does the same. She grabs an ice spike and kills
Speaker 2: yet another survivor, and then Ted kills her as well,
Speaker 2: all before Am has time to react.
Speaker 3: So all of the remaining humans are killed in an
Speaker 3: instant except for the narrator.
Speaker 2: That's right, Ted is the sole survivor. And then we
Speaker 2: fast forward some unspecified and unknowable amount of time, and
Speaker 2: we learned that in his rage, Am has taken Ted again,
Speaker 2: the last human survivor. He can't bring anybody back. This
Speaker 2: is all he has left of the species that he
Speaker 2: sought revenge against. And in just insane vengeance here he
Speaker 2: drastically alters Ted's physiology and turns him into a kind
Speaker 2: of mouthless blob like entity that is incapable of hurting
Speaker 2: itself or running away. And then Ted reflects on this
Speaker 2: and the final bit of the story here, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to read this last paragraph outwardly, dumbly, I shamble
Speaker 2: about a thing that could never have been known as human,
Speaker 2: a thing whose shape is so alien, a travesty that
Speaker 2: humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance inwardly alone
Speaker 2: here living under land, under the sea, in the belly
Speaker 2: of Am, who we created because our time was badly spent,
Speaker 2: and we must have known unconsciously that he could do
Speaker 2: it better. At least the four of them are safe
Speaker 2: at last, Am will be all the matter for that
Speaker 2: it makes me a little happier. And yet Am has won,
Speaker 2: simply he has taken his revenge. I have no mouth,
Speaker 2: and I must scream.
Speaker 3: So I can see why this story had the impact
Speaker 3: that it did. It is quite powerful, but also the
Speaker 3: effect it had on me was so bad. I feel
Speaker 3: like I to be on it. Like it is in
Speaker 3: some ways a great story, but I like hated reading
Speaker 3: it and hate what it did to me. Is it
Speaker 3: inflicts this kind of sticky misery that followed me around?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean it is a it's a mean
Speaker 2: little story with about as bleak an ending as you
Speaker 2: could hope for. I mean, at the end, Ted does
Speaker 2: sacrifice himself to save his fellow humans from endless torment.
Speaker 2: And then as far as you know the character goes here,
Speaker 2: you know this is This is not a character overflowing
Speaker 2: with warmth. These characters are are mean and nasty to
Speaker 2: each other, seemingly because that is the way Am wanted
Speaker 2: it to be. Like part of its joy is in
Speaker 2: turning them against each other and making them, you know,
Speaker 2: all miserable and miserable to each other. That's part of
Speaker 2: its revenge.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say also that it feels to me like
Speaker 3: they are they are not treated kindly by the writer either,
Speaker 3: that there is there is an inherent I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what I mean. Maybe maybe it would have to
Speaker 3: feel this way to tell this kind of story, but
Speaker 3: it it doesn't feel like the writer is sympathetic enough
Speaker 3: to them. Yeah, while depicting their torments. It's just it
Speaker 3: just has a core like mean and bleakness that feels awful.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, outside of the narrative, I think we can
Speaker 2: easily identify some rather misogynistic writing here. Yeah, that can
Speaker 2: be viewed I guess inside the narrative as the tormented
Speaker 2: nature of the characters. But still I think it reads
Speaker 2: rather obviously as misogynistic. And then there's also some character
Speaker 2: or author level ignorance about homosexuality as well. And interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: I'm to understand some of these details would have been
Speaker 2: material edited out of the story's initial publication, but then
Speaker 2: it gets put back in later on. Not to say
Speaker 2: that the original published version of the story was completely
Speaker 2: devoid of these qualities, but to understand like some like
Speaker 2: sexual references were removed from the initial publication.
Speaker 3: But at the same time that I say all that
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem like an unintended effect. It seems like
Speaker 3: the point of this story is to inflict horror and misery,
Speaker 3: and it does that better than almost any other story
Speaker 3: I can think of. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's also worth noting this is this is
Speaker 2: a a sleek little tale. This is okay at the
Speaker 2: exact word count, but we're somewhere between what five thousand
Speaker 2: and six thousand words somewhere in that like a nice
Speaker 2: sweet spot for a short story, you know, from a
Speaker 2: publication standpoint, and also a consumability standpoint, you know, this
Speaker 2: is like a chicken biscuit of a story where you're
Speaker 2: probably going to be able to finish the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and if you do, maybe you'll have a second chicken biscuit,
Speaker 2: but you're probably not putting half of it in the
Speaker 2: fridge for later. But that also means that, in an
Speaker 2: a glorious way, this is exactly the length of story
Speaker 2: where you have so many unanswered questions. The imagination, you know,
Speaker 2: runs wild trying to piece together what's not said about
Speaker 2: Am and its world and the struggles of these characters.
Speaker 2: It also means you also you can't necessarily develop all
Speaker 2: the characters as richly as you could in a you know,
Speaker 2: a longer format, certainly in a novella or a novel.
Speaker 2: All right, So what is this story trying to teach us?
Speaker 2: Or what questions is it asking? What is it warning
Speaker 2: us against? And what is it saying about technology specifically
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence? I guess some of that. Some of these
Speaker 2: are going to be just painfully obvious. But the big one,
Speaker 2: of course is maybe be careful about how much power
Speaker 2: you hand over to machines?
Speaker 3: Right, sure, it seems pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like I think in interviews Ellison would often
Speaker 2: say that, like his primary concern was, you know, what
Speaker 2: happens if you hand over military powers to a machine?
Speaker 2: But I think ultimately the story kind of grapples with
Speaker 2: other ideas or could be compared to other things as well.
Speaker 2: You know, like when we hand more of our life
Speaker 2: over to a machine, what does that mean? And it
Speaker 2: goes beyond like military powers, but like, what what does
Speaker 2: it mean when I loved when text messages you and
Speaker 2: you allow your device to reply with a generated response,
Speaker 2: you know what is lost? And even that small act
Speaker 2: and then what is is there a cumulative effect? You know,
Speaker 2: there are not necessarily any clear, definitive answers here, but
Speaker 2: you know, it's certainly worth thinking about.
Speaker 3: I would say, yes, I think the it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's a there are a lot of things that it
Speaker 3: makes sense to automate, but I don't love the idea
Speaker 3: of automating the things that give our lives meaning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which seems like there's been a real push
Speaker 2: to do that. Let's take away the things the most
Speaker 2: human acts of creation, you know, personal or commercial, and
Speaker 2: let's automate those. Let's turn those over to you know,
Speaker 2: language models and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's automate our relationships to spend so we have
Speaker 3: more time for email.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the other another topic that of course comes
Speaker 2: to mind and all of this is something that's talked
Speaker 2: about quite a lot, and that is ethical guardrails on AI.
Speaker 2: You know, this is one that you hear just I
Speaker 2: think every major AI company talks about this a lot,
Speaker 2: takes it seriously, or at least claims to take it seriously.
Speaker 2: You know, how do you not make AM? How do
Speaker 2: you not create a sky net or something like that,
Speaker 2: or even something that is not nearly as malicious, because again,
Speaker 2: AM is kind of like the most malicious vision of
Speaker 2: ail you could possibly dream up, but even if you
Speaker 2: made something like ten percent as horrible, it would be
Speaker 2: a failure. So you know, how do we avoid that?
Speaker 2: And that's a big question too, like can we do that?
Speaker 2: Like can we actually put guardrails on these things and
Speaker 2: keep them from becoming malignant, becoming problems on any level.
Speaker 3: I might have more to say about this later, but yeah,
Speaker 3: we've talked on the show before about how I don't
Speaker 3: think you have to imagine a worst case scenario either
Speaker 3: for the level of power or for the level of
Speaker 3: maliciousness in an AI, for an AI scenario to turn
Speaker 3: out very bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, because there are obviously big questions, like you know,
Speaker 2: talking about like broad questions of morality and ethics or
Speaker 2: certainly anytime you're a man imagining some sort of AI
Speaker 2: system controlling or influencing military, economic, or social systems. But
Speaker 2: then there's like the smaller, more personal examples, like you know,
Speaker 2: a chatbot that someone interacts with while depressed, lonely or angry.
Speaker 2: Like you know, if if that scenario doesn't have like
Speaker 2: all the proper ethical guardrails in place, like you know,
Speaker 2: there are all sorts of horrible possibilities, and and then
Speaker 2: it just it also raises the question again, can you
Speaker 2: really control that environment? Can you really create can you
Speaker 2: really fool proof it? You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, And and by the way I mean, I
Speaker 3: would say, of course you raised this in the way
Speaker 3: I think that it would normally be brought up, like
Speaker 3: there is danger in creating AI without ethical guard rails.
Speaker 3: You need to you need to have the guardrails in place.
Speaker 3: But I think it's also worth considering, and implied by
Speaker 3: this story, the question of whether it's actually possible to
Speaker 3: create effective guardrails for AI, or you know, is it
Speaker 3: the that maybe AI is a branch of technology that
Speaker 3: is impossible to make safe. Maybe that is a fundamental
Speaker 3: feature of it. I'm not necessarily claiming that, but doesn't
Speaker 3: seem implausible to me. It seems like it could be true.
Speaker 3: And then there's another distinction to consider. There are two
Speaker 3: different ways to ask the question can AI be made safe?
Speaker 3: There's the fundamental version of the question what I just said,
Speaker 3: is it possible for an AI to exist that's like
Speaker 3: truly aligned for humanity's benefit and its effects are actually
Speaker 3: good overall? And then even if the answer to that
Speaker 3: first question is yes, that is possible. There's a secondary
Speaker 3: practical question if it's possible for nice AI to exist,
Speaker 3: given the environment in which the AI would be created
Speaker 3: and the incentives driving its creation, is it plausible that
Speaker 3: a nice AI is the kind that would be created?
Speaker 3: So imagine instead of being created and say, I don't know,
Speaker 3: a university the laboratory with an infinite time horizon, there
Speaker 3: are like pressures on the people creating it, like we've
Speaker 3: got to go faster, and we've got to make money,
Speaker 3: and we've got to you know, we've got to get
Speaker 3: there faster than somebody else. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 3: those sort of things would really cause people to make
Speaker 3: excuses for why you don't need to pay attention to
Speaker 3: the ethical guardrails. Actually, yeah, it'll be good enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, another concern that is brought up in the
Speaker 2: story is that of the unintended consequences of creating artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: and this reminded me a bit of my interview with
Speaker 2: author Jonathan Birch from the last couple of years about
Speaker 2: his twenty twenty four book The Edge of Sentience, Risk
Speaker 2: and Precaution in Humans Other Animals in AI, and he
Speaker 2: discussed that there are arguments for regular testing for consciousness
Speaker 2: in AIS and legal protections for such intelligence should they
Speaker 2: be detected within the story. I mean we might ask
Speaker 2: the question, could AM's devastation and vengeance have been prevented
Speaker 2: if we'd only recognized his personal plight early early on?
Speaker 2: You know, it's not really the sort of story to
Speaker 2: consider this option, but I think you could easily make
Speaker 2: that sort of argument. You know, in creating something that
Speaker 2: is potentially sentient, what is our responsibility as the creator?
Speaker 2: And in general, you know, the ever persistent warning is,
Speaker 2: you know, against allowing the consequences of technology to outstrip
Speaker 2: our abilities to respond in safeguard. But yeah, as far
Speaker 2: as consciousness goes, would we be able to detect it
Speaker 2: if it was there? What would false positives mean? Might
Speaker 2: we you know, what would happen if we started seeing
Speaker 2: it where it wasn't. There's so many additional questions that arise.
Speaker 3: In this in this scenario as well, Yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 3: mean fraught with these kinds of questions. Though I do
Speaker 3: want to emphasize I alluded to this earlier, but I
Speaker 3: don't think that AI is owned potentially dangerous If we're
Speaker 3: reaching sort of hypothetical tipping points like sentience or or
Speaker 3: levels of power like you know, AGI or nearly omnipotent superintelligence.
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. Something we've talked about on the
Speaker 3: show is how a much less powerful and less intelligent
Speaker 3: type of AI could still potentially be a threat to
Speaker 3: humankind simply by automating destructive processes. In other words, by
Speaker 3: making it cheaper and easier to do harmful things at
Speaker 3: a vast scale. So I don't think we have a
Speaker 3: way of knowing if the current generation of AI based
Speaker 3: on like large language models will ultimately lead to more
Speaker 3: harm or more benefit for humankind. You know, don't know.
Speaker 3: It could go one way or the other, could be
Speaker 3: a wash. But one way that I already see it
Speaker 3: potentially causing massive harm is by making it easier than
Speaker 3: ever to pollute the already toxic information ecosystem with more
Speaker 3: and more garbage and phoniness. Yeah, you know, creating this
Speaker 3: world in which fake facts and fake opinions and fake people,
Speaker 3: fake claims, fake interactions, fake commerce, fake culture drown out
Speaker 3: the signal of real human knowledge and thought. And you
Speaker 3: don't need an am or a sky net to do that.
Speaker 3: You can do that with models that already exist today,
Speaker 3: and that is, in a sense an ongoing project, which
Speaker 3: I do think represents a kind of system wide threat
Speaker 3: for humankind. Is hard to know exactly how severe that
Speaker 3: threat will be and whether it's outweighed by positives and
Speaker 3: increases in productivity and stuff like that that AI brings
Speaker 3: with it. But of course with those benefits you also
Speaker 3: get other downsides that come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I mean there's some again. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: don't have to think about a sky net or a
Speaker 2: full blown AM or a general artificial intelligence level of
Speaker 2: scenario to get into troubling situations. I mean, I was
Speaker 2: just reading I believe that this was an MPR headline
Speaker 2: from October eighth of this year. One in five high
Speaker 2: schoolers has had a romantic AI relationship or knows someone
Speaker 2: who has. And this was based on then new research
Speaker 2: from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that
Speaker 2: advocates for civil rights, civil liberties, and the responsible use
Speaker 2: of data and technology, and in talking about how young
Speaker 2: people are using chatbots for various levels of emotional support
Speaker 2: as well and then engaging in romantic or something like
Speaker 2: romantic AI interactions, and yeah, I mean I try not
Speaker 2: to be you know, a complete Butlerian about the whole thing,
Speaker 2: or a luddite, you know, and try and see, you know,
Speaker 2: how these systems can potentially be of use. You know,
Speaker 2: I think back to stories from just you know, ten
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago talking about how you know, AI could
Speaker 2: enhance human potential, enhance human creativity and so forth, and
Speaker 2: you know, I'm loathed to believe that that dream is
Speaker 2: completely dead. But I read stuff like this and I
Speaker 2: don't know, it feels terrifying. You know, maybe I'm overreacting.
Speaker 2: But you know, as the father of a thirteen year
Speaker 2: old child, you know, I think about these potential threats
Speaker 2: and things like this, and things I can't even imagine
Speaker 2: yet that are related to artificial intelligence and language models,
Speaker 2: and I, you know, it gives me a lot of
Speaker 2: pause for concern. And again, you know, we're not even
Speaker 2: presumably anywhere close to the general AI level in any
Speaker 2: of these concerns.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I can remember a time when I thought
Speaker 3: of killer AI stories as potentially fun subject matter for
Speaker 3: science fiction, the way I still feel about all kinds
Speaker 3: of other subgenres in sci fi, like alien invasion stories
Speaker 3: or time travels to worries. But I can't get back
Speaker 3: into that care free mind space about AI. Now, given
Speaker 3: the world we live in and the stakes of it,
Speaker 3: I have increasingly found killer AI fiction genuinely horrifying, dismaying,
Speaker 3: and demoralizing. And so I don't mean to blame you, Rob,
Speaker 3: because in a way, I'm glad I read the story
Speaker 3: like it is in some sense as a great story.
Speaker 3: But really reading the story really put my mind in
Speaker 3: a bad place.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean I felt the same way. I
Speaker 2: didn't read this and then think, man, that was such
Speaker 2: a great escape from my from my daily thoughts. I
Speaker 2: should make Joe read it too. You know, it definitely
Speaker 2: hit hard, and I think it's a testament to the
Speaker 2: power and the potency of the tale and the writing
Speaker 2: that it that it still hits that hard. You know,
Speaker 2: we probably need a palate cleanser at this point. So
Speaker 2: I think we should move on to our next selection.
Speaker 2: But I want to highlight just a little bit of
Speaker 2: added synchronicity here. I'm going to read a quote from
Speaker 2: I Have No Mouth that I'm a scream. This is
Speaker 2: where the narrators describing a giant monster, a big old
Speaker 2: monster bird that Am has created as another torment for
Speaker 2: the five survivors. Ellison writes of quote ridges of tufted flesh,
Speaker 2: puckered about two evil eyes, as cold as the view
Speaker 2: down into a glacial crevass, ice blue and somehow moving liquidly.
Speaker 3: Okay. My selection for this episode is a story called
Speaker 3: The Crevass by Dale Bailey and Nathan Balingrude. It has
Speaker 3: appeared in several sources, but I read it in Balingrude's
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen collection North American Lake Monsters. Of the story's
Speaker 3: two authors, I'm more familiar with Nathan Bellingrude. I read
Speaker 3: a story of his earlier this month called Secret Night,
Speaker 3: which was in a themed collection of horror stories called
Speaker 3: Night and Day edited by Ellen Datlow that was published
Speaker 3: just this year. And that story is a hallucinatory Appalachian
Speaker 3: nightmare that begins when a highway patrolman comes across the
Speaker 3: scene of an accident on this mountain road late at night,
Speaker 3: and all of the cars involved are empty, apparently abandoned
Speaker 3: by the passengers, and it gets weirder from there. On
Speaker 3: the strength of that story, I ended up buying a
Speaker 3: couple of Bellingrude's collections, including this one from twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: I haven't finished it yet, but so far I think
Speaker 3: it is excellent, And as soon as I was a
Speaker 3: few pages into this story in particular, I knew it
Speaker 3: was the one I would want to talk about in
Speaker 3: today's episode, because well, it does include a speculative horror element.
Speaker 3: I think the most frightening thing in it is a
Speaker 3: danger that is absolutely real and a genuine terror to
Speaker 3: people navigating the landscape of this story setting, which is
Speaker 3: an antarctic glacier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a great selection, Joe. I was not
Speaker 2: familiar with this story or the authors in question here,
Speaker 2: but I really enjoyed it quite a bit, and I
Speaker 2: agree the real world scenario is so terrifying that when
Speaker 2: the speculat development is introduced, things almost feel safer, but
Speaker 2: not quite, because ultimately I think everything works perfectly here
Speaker 2: and builds appropriately as we'll discuss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so before we get into the summary, I got
Speaker 3: to mention the two authors. So. Nathan Balingrude is an
Speaker 3: American writer of horror and dark fantasy. He has published
Speaker 3: several collections of short fiction, including this book I Got
Speaker 3: North American Lake Monster Is in twenty thirteen, a collection
Speaker 3: called Wounds in twenty nineteen, and he's also written some
Speaker 3: novels and novellas. One of them is called The Strange
Speaker 3: from twenty twenty three and crypt of the Moon Spider
Speaker 3: from last year. A good title, that's a great title. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The stories of his that I've read so far I
Speaker 3: think are very strong because of a few things. A
Speaker 3: power of scene setting, really putting you in the scene,
Speaker 3: generally with vivid and enjoyable prose and imaginative, but also
Speaker 3: I would say appropriately restrained deployment of the supernatural elements.
Speaker 3: And I'm personally fond of horror stories like this that
Speaker 3: keep things a little more on the mysterious side and
Speaker 3: don't explain everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this will be a good point to come back to.
Speaker 2: And I will also stress that this story is also
Speaker 2: a chicken biscuit. This one is nice, nice and short. Yeah,
Speaker 2: plenty of space for you to do your own dreaming
Speaker 2: and then have a second chicken biscuit if you so desire.
Speaker 3: There you go. Also, I think Ballangrud's the stories of
Speaker 3: his i've read, have generally strong characters who are fully human,
Speaker 3: and I've read a lot of contemporary horror stories this month.
Speaker 3: I don't want to shame anybody, but more than a
Speaker 3: few of them have the issue of like an interesting
Speaker 3: monster or premise, but the human characters don't feel very
Speaker 3: real or their motivations are not very compelling. So even
Speaker 3: if the supernatural premise is cool, it doesn't hit quite
Speaker 3: as hard as it could because it's not grounded in
Speaker 3: humanity as much. Some of the balland Greude stories I've
Speaker 3: read have a real intimacy with the characters, like you
Speaker 3: get to know them and their deep dreads and desires
Speaker 3: and contradictions. Others are drawn with a bit more distance,
Speaker 3: but they still have a kind of hard edge of
Speaker 3: real humanity and the behavior. I'd say the story is
Speaker 3: somewhere in between. You do kind of get to know
Speaker 3: the main character pretty well. The others are a bit
Speaker 3: more just sketched from a distance, but they do feel real.
Speaker 3: The other author of the story, Dale Bailey, of whom
Speaker 3: I don't think I've read anything else, is an American
Speaker 3: speculative fiction author who's been publishing since the nineties. Some
Speaker 3: of his more recent publications seem to be a novel
Speaker 3: called In the Nightwood from twenty eighteen, a weird story
Speaker 3: collection called The End of the End of Everything from
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, and then oh, this one gets my attention.
Speaker 3: A story collection from twenty twenty three called This Island
Speaker 3: Earth eight features from the Drive, in which promises stories
Speaker 3: inspired by the Drive in sci fi movies of the Eisenhower.
Speaker 3: So I am intrigued there.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, I'm going to grab a sample of
Speaker 2: that for.
Speaker 3: Sure, trying to imagine something like Creature with the Adam brain,
Speaker 3: but with the thoughtful, haunted literary sensibility and good writing
Speaker 3: in the story we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm intrigued by that. I looked up The Crevasse. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this was its publication. History is apparently first published in
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine's Lovecraft Unbound, which was also edited
Speaker 2: by Ellen Datlow. A pretty great looking collection that also
Speaker 2: features tales from the likes of Caitlin R. Kiernan, Michael Chabin, Joyce,
Speaker 2: Carol Oates, Michael Shea, and Lard barn All, authors that
Speaker 2: I've enjoyed before, with Michael Shay being one of my
Speaker 2: absolute favorites. So it looks like a strong collection in
Speaker 2: and of itself.
Speaker 3: And obviously I think this story is meant to be
Speaker 3: a play on a Lovecraftian theme, based on stuff like
Speaker 3: at the Mountains of Madness, which we can come back to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an Antarctic horror tale, and there's also
Speaker 2: a fun little allusion to John Carpenter's The Thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, clearly inspired by that as well. So the
Speaker 3: story is set in Antarctica, not long after the end
Speaker 3: of the First World War. The protagonist is a new
Speaker 3: Englander named Garner, a medical doctor from Boston who joins
Speaker 3: a dangerous expedition to plant a flag of some kind
Speaker 3: or another on the Southern Continent. I don't know if
Speaker 3: they're racing to get to the South Pole. I think
Speaker 3: it would have already been achieved at this point. But
Speaker 3: he's on an expedition of some kind exploration adventure. Fame
Speaker 3: is promised two members of this expedition, though he doesn't
Speaker 3: really seem concerned with that, And this is after the
Speaker 3: end of his combat duty in the war and the
Speaker 3: tragic death of his beloved wife Elizabeth from the flu
Speaker 3: during his absence in the war, and Garner is something
Speaker 3: of a lost soul. He's haunted, faithless, and mostly passive
Speaker 3: sympathetic in that he is moved by pity, but clearly
Speaker 3: seen by his expedition mates as lacking in guts. Oh
Speaker 3: and this might have been the allusion to the thing
Speaker 3: you were talking about, But the named leader of the expedition,
Speaker 3: who never appears in the story is just referenced, is MacCready.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the reference. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So at the outset of the narrative, Garner is part
Speaker 3: of a small group of four men who have broken
Speaker 3: off from the main expedition to bring an injured man
Speaker 3: back to the seaside depot that they departed from for treatment.
Speaker 3: And they're traveling across the Antarctic glacier by sledge, each
Speaker 3: sledge pulled by a team of dogs. The injured man
Speaker 3: is named Faber. On the main expedition, we find out
Speaker 3: that he took a bad step and broke his leg
Speaker 3: while walking outside the camp to relieve himself. Now he's
Speaker 3: got a compound fracture and he's fighting sepsis and living
Speaker 3: in a morphine Hayes. The other two men are Bishop,
Speaker 3: who is presented as a practical man, the one who
Speaker 3: seems to be in charge, kind of a plane dealer,
Speaker 3: and then Connolly, who is a short tempered hot head.
Speaker 3: I think one of the best things about the story
Speaker 3: is the way that it puts you in the setting
Speaker 3: and makes the atmosphere tactile. You can kind of feel it.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read a couple of passages. This
Speaker 3: is from the very beginning the author's write quote what
Speaker 3: he loved was the silence, the pristine clarity of the
Speaker 3: ice shelf, the purposeful breathing of the dog straining against
Speaker 3: their traces, the hiss of the runners, the opalescent arc
Speaker 3: of the sky. Garner peered through shifting veils of snow
Speaker 3: at the endless sweep of glacial terrain before him, the
Speaker 3: wind gnawing at him, forcing him to reach out periodically
Speaker 3: and scrape at the thin crust of ice that clung
Speaker 3: to the edges of his face mask, the dry rasp
Speaker 3: of the fabric against his face, reminding him that he
Speaker 3: was alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great example of the writing style here.
Speaker 2: It works so well with this this desolate but beautiful,
Speaker 2: really almost other worldly environment about is, you know, one
Speaker 2: of those extreme environments on our planet that clearly we
Speaker 2: were we did not evolve to thrive in, certainly not
Speaker 2: without the aid of technology that we would develop. And
Speaker 2: we also get just a little bit of writing about
Speaker 2: the dogs here. The authors here write rather warmly of
Speaker 2: dog proximity in multiple places, and even as a non
Speaker 2: dog person, I totally got what they were going for.
Speaker 2: I love these little telling details, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the warmth toward the dogs in the story is
Speaker 3: interesting because of the reality of how harsh the fate
Speaker 3: of dogs on these kinds of expeditions was, and that
Speaker 3: turns out to be that is the case in the
Speaker 3: story as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of the supplemental information I was reading
Speaker 2: about from the histories of these expeditions, like multiple sources
Speaker 2: point out that these dogs were highly valued and important
Speaker 2: because first of all, they're pulling the sledge, like you
Speaker 2: literally could not pull these expeditions off at this point
Speaker 2: in time with out them. But also the companionship that
Speaker 2: the humans had with these animals. And again this extreme
Speaker 2: dangerous environment, like an environment that really wants you dead
Speaker 2: if you do it's almost am like its intensity, you know,
Speaker 2: like you're not supposed to survive there. And the dogs,
Speaker 2: the companionship with the dogs, helped these humans survive there.
Speaker 2: And I think there's something beautiful and haunting and perfect
Speaker 2: for this tale in that fact.
Speaker 3: Very true. So the inciting moment of the story comes
Speaker 3: Very soon after the beginning, as the sledges are traveling
Speaker 3: along the ice, I'll read from the narration quote, a
Speaker 3: thunderous crack, loud as lightning cleaving stone, shivered the ice,
Speaker 3: and the dogs of the lead sledge, maybe twenty five
Speaker 3: yards ahead of Garner, erupted into panicky cries. Garner saw
Speaker 3: it happen. The lead sledge sluffed over, hurling connolly into
Speaker 3: the snow, and plunged nose first through the ice, as
Speaker 3: though in an enormous hand had reached up through the
Speaker 3: earth to snatch it under. So here we meet the
Speaker 3: natural world horror that the story is based on. What
Speaker 3: has happened is that the first sledge has gone into
Speaker 3: a giant crack known as a crevasse in the ice.
Speaker 3: The lead dog has plunged into it. The whole sledge
Speaker 3: hasn't gone in, but the first dog has. So the
Speaker 3: crevasse is deep and dark, and the dog remains hanging
Speaker 3: down into the crevasse by its tracers. The men decide
Speaker 3: in an instant that they have no choice but to
Speaker 3: cut the dog loose and let it fall, or it's
Speaker 3: going to drag the sledge and the other dogs and
Speaker 3: supplies they need into the pit. And then Garner, whether
Speaker 3: out of compassion for the dog or just indecision, hesitates
Speaker 3: in his job of cutting the dog loose, and this
Speaker 3: anger is connilly. But after the initial disaster is over,
Speaker 3: they set up camp so they can rest and get
Speaker 3: warm inside their tent. Faber, the injured man, seems to
Speaker 3: be doing worse and worse, and in a horrible twist,
Speaker 3: the dog that they sacrificed to the crevasse was not
Speaker 3: killed in the fall. They can hear it somewhere down
Speaker 3: in the pit, howling in pain. And Garner thinks about
Speaker 3: the carnage that he saw in the war, about the
Speaker 3: way that his wife died away from him without him
Speaker 3: being there with her, and this seems somehow also tangled
Speaker 3: up in feelings about Faber, the injured man, who is
Speaker 3: trapped in a miasma of morphine fever, dreams and pain
Speaker 3: and hallucinating. And eventually Garner's pity for the dog drives
Speaker 3: him to sneak out of the tent while the others
Speaker 3: are sleeping, rig up a rope system, and climb down
Speaker 3: into the crevasse so he can end the poor animals suffering.
Speaker 2: Now, this decision is absolutely supported on a character level here.
Speaker 2: I want to stress that, but it's also one of
Speaker 2: those things we're reading a story and thinking about tropes
Speaker 2: and plotting, you might think, was this is this the
Speaker 2: dumb decision of the horror story? Here is the dumb
Speaker 2: thing that our character does, the risky move that they
Speaker 2: make that brings them in closer proximity to horror? I
Speaker 2: mean maybe structure structurally kind of yes, but we'll discuss
Speaker 2: in a bit, like there are historic examples of this
Speaker 2: exact sort of thing, Like going out of your way
Speaker 2: to save a sled dog from a gravas is not
Speaker 2: only something that is possible and likely, but it definitely
Speaker 2: happened and again well supported in the story, regardless of
Speaker 2: what the reality was. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, unfortunately in this case, the sled dog is beyond
Speaker 3: saving it fatally injured and stuck at the bottom. But
Speaker 3: at least Garner hopes that he can put the dog
Speaker 3: out of its misery. So when he gets all the
Speaker 3: way down to the bottom of the chasm and the ice,
Speaker 3: he discovers something strange. It's not just a deep crack
Speaker 3: in the glacier like you would expect. That alone is
Speaker 3: horrifying enough vanishing down into the distance below this crack
Speaker 3: and the narrowing crack in the ice. Oh, I get
Speaker 3: shivers just about it. But underneath the ice, the crack
Speaker 3: reveals an opening, an opening into a vast, cavernous space,
Speaker 3: the nearest part of which that Garner can see is
Speaker 3: a carved rock staircase of enormous size leading down into
Speaker 3: the dark. And Garner believes he sees not only stairs,
Speaker 3: but imagery reliefs etched into the rock showing some kind
Speaker 3: of creature, but he doesn't really understand what he's looking at,
Speaker 3: this weird taloned medusa like form that he doesn't comprehend.
Speaker 3: And the stairs also have this power of summoning a
Speaker 3: psychic force invites him to come down, and it's implied
Speaker 3: I think that it's actively probing his mind for a
Speaker 3: psychological foothold, because for some reason, looking down into the descent,
Speaker 3: he thinks of Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is such a haunting moment. Again, on
Speaker 2: one level, it almost feels less dangerous when there are
Speaker 2: even supernatural, oversized cyclopean stairs down there, because well, at
Speaker 2: least something walk down here, and it's not just the
Speaker 2: lifeless ice pit that we thought it was, But of
Speaker 2: course I think many, if not most, readers of this
Speaker 2: tale would be familiar with the writings of HP Lovecraft,
Speaker 2: and they see exactly what we're dealing with here, because,
Speaker 2: of course, one of HP Lovecraft's most well known tales
Speaker 2: is At the Mountains of Madness, which concerns elder ruins
Speaker 2: in Antarctica and various horrifying revelations that occur when humans
Speaker 2: plunge those ruins. And on top of this, there's also
Speaker 2: just the element of stairs. Lovecraft frequently employed stairways as
Speaker 2: a liminal space or threshold between one world and another,
Speaker 2: and more to the point between sanity and darkness, between
Speaker 2: healthy human ignorance of the cosmos and crushing revelations about
Speaker 2: its true nature. So it's a nice nod here to
Speaker 2: weird fit, a great Lovecraftian bit of flavor, without, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned earlier, revealing too much or getting into the lore.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lesser tail might have decided to
Speaker 2: throw out a few elder god names here, or maybe
Speaker 2: crunch on the mythos qualities just a little bit too much.
Speaker 2: And a lot of restraint is shown here, and it
Speaker 2: works well and again, especially in a short tail like this,
Speaker 2: it inspires us to then dream like where do these
Speaker 2: stairs go? Yeah, and we're kind of drawn down them
Speaker 2: as well, just like the narrator.
Speaker 3: But Garner does not have the opportunity to descend the
Speaker 3: stairs because he's interrupted as he's starting to clamber down them.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, he's drawn. He starts to go down them,
Speaker 3: but he is discovered by Connolly up above looking down,
Speaker 3: who is furious with him for taking this stupid risk,
Speaker 3: not just with his own life, but with all of
Speaker 3: their lives, especially favors. Because Antarctica is an unforgiving place.
Speaker 3: Any decision you make could spell death for yourself or
Speaker 3: for others.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Garner tries to convince Bishop, and so he comes back up,
Speaker 3: climbs the rope back out of the crevass, and tries
Speaker 3: to convince the other two men, Bishop and Connolly of
Speaker 3: what he saw down there. They're not really interested at first,
Speaker 3: but he appeals to their sense of desire for adventure
Speaker 3: and fame. This is one of the references to McCready's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: so McCready's going to be out there planning the flag
Speaker 3: while you have to go back. But you could be
Speaker 3: the discoverer of one of the most important scientific finds
Speaker 3: in human history, whatever it is that's down there. Because
Speaker 3: unlike Garner, who it seems just somehow ended up on
Speaker 3: this journey because he was otherwise adrift, these two men
Speaker 3: are driven by ambition, it's implied, and that ambition was
Speaker 3: dashed when they had to split off from the main
Speaker 3: party to return Favored to the depots. So they're already unhappy.
Speaker 3: They shine a flashlight down into the crevass, but it's
Speaker 3: too deep to make out the stairs or the cavern beyond,
Speaker 3: if they ever really were there. We assume they probably were.
Speaker 3: They can only see the dog's body lying in blood
Speaker 3: on the lip of ice far below. However, while they're watching,
Speaker 3: the dog suddenly is moved, yanked away by something out
Speaker 3: of sight. They don't have time to process this because
Speaker 3: immediately Faber, the injured man, cries out in pain or
Speaker 3: terror from the tent, and the men rush in to
Speaker 3: see what's the matter, and Faber becomes lucid enough to
Speaker 3: explain to them what's wrong, And I loved this moment.
Speaker 3: Didn't quite expect this. When he finally is able to speak,
Speaker 3: he says, it laid an egg in me. They don't understand,
Speaker 3: but he insists, quote, Faber found a way to smile
Speaker 3: in my dream. It put my head inside its body
Speaker 3: and it laid an egg in me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yikes. Yeah. And we don't really get any clarity
Speaker 2: on what this exactly means. You know, what sort of
Speaker 2: revelation did he have or is this you know, is
Speaker 2: this part of the morphine playing with his head? We
Speaker 2: don't really know. Oh, but a man, it's haunting.
Speaker 3: So Garner at this point prepares to sedate him with
Speaker 3: another morphine, Ampuel, but Faber doesn't want He doesn't want
Speaker 3: this for some reason, and he lashes out and fights.
Speaker 3: The fight knocks over a kerosene heater and this sets
Speaker 3: fire to the tent, leading to a mad scramble for survival.
Speaker 2: This was the part when I went on my first
Speaker 2: read where I was like, oh my, this is the
Speaker 2: moment where they're going to have to go down those
Speaker 2: stairs together where they're gonna not have any equipment or
Speaker 2: dogs left, and they're gonna think, well, we have nothing
Speaker 2: to do but go down those stairs. But that's not
Speaker 2: where the story goes.
Speaker 3: No, there's a different kind of horror at the end.
Speaker 3: There's a horror of wondering what might have been so
Speaker 3: the men after this, they just book it back to
Speaker 3: their destination. They try to make it to the depot
Speaker 3: as fast as they can now their tent is burned.
Speaker 3: Faber does not survive the journey, he dies in transit,
Speaker 3: but they do reach the safety of the depot. The
Speaker 3: three surviving men hole up to wait for the return
Speaker 3: of the rest of the expedition, which is weeks away,
Speaker 3: And while they are holed up in the depot, Garner
Speaker 3: tries to talk to Bishop to get him to acknowledge
Speaker 3: that he saw something in the crevasse, to at least
Speaker 3: admit that he saw the dog dragged away, but Bishop
Speaker 3: is very stubborn about it.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Bishop refused to look at him. This is an empty place,
Speaker 3: he said, after a long silence. There's nothing here. He
Speaker 3: blinked and turned a page in the magazine Nothing. And
Speaker 3: I loved this part because I think that line highlights
Speaker 3: a subtext, an interesting implication of the story. To Bishop,
Speaker 3: the idea that there might be something hidden, something possibly
Speaker 3: monstrous and mind rending under the ice waiting to be revealed,
Speaker 3: is troubling. That possibility is terrifying, and he denies it.
Speaker 3: So he takes emotional comfort in telling himself, probably lying
Speaker 3: to himself because it implies he did see the dog
Speaker 3: dragged away, at least telling himself there's nothing there. And
Speaker 3: I think for Garner, by the end of the story,
Speaker 3: the opposite desire is operative. The opposite is true. The
Speaker 3: nothingness and the absence are what would be frightening. The
Speaker 3: idea that there is something hidden waiting to be revealed,
Speaker 3: even if it's monstrous, even if it's something that would
Speaker 3: destroy him, is somehow comforting. And this duality of orientations
Speaker 3: toward mystery and understanding is I think a very important
Speaker 3: part of humanity. Which option bothers you more the idea
Speaker 3: that there is something unknown, as yet unrevealed, that could
Speaker 3: destroy you, could destroy everything you love or destroy your
Speaker 3: understanding of reality. Or would it be worse if there
Speaker 3: is nothing more that what you see is what you get?
Speaker 3: And for you, I guess the question is emotionally, does
Speaker 3: there is nothing more? Reduced to there is nothing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean it brings to mind the famous Arthur C.
Speaker 2: Clark quote. Right, two possibilities exist. Either we are alone
Speaker 2: in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And It plays nicely with exactly what we're discussing earlier.
Speaker 2: Is the crevass scarier before we see the stairs or
Speaker 2: is it the other way around? You know, it works
Speaker 2: so perfectly in the story, that duality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for Bishop, it's implied that the stairs, to
Speaker 3: find the stairs would be more frightening than the crevass.
Speaker 3: For Garner, I think the crevasse is frightening, but once
Speaker 3: he sees the stairs, now that there is a mystery,
Speaker 3: now that there could be something more, it's actually inviting.
Speaker 3: And I like that the story implies a correlation between
Speaker 3: these two different attitudes and other things about the person.
Speaker 3: This rings true to me. Bishop, who wishes there to
Speaker 3: be nothing more, is a person who's ambitious, with an
Speaker 3: orientation toward future goals. There's stuff he wants to do
Speaker 3: and accomplish. Garner, who is defined by the past and
Speaker 3: what has already been taken away. He's got loss of purpose,
Speaker 3: loss of his great love. He wishes for a key
Speaker 3: to unlock a new world, for there to be something
Speaker 3: more revealed, even if it's horrible.
Speaker 2: And it's clearly horrible. Yeah, there's no there's no hint
Speaker 2: that it's anything but horrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna read from the final paragraph here with
Speaker 3: with the Garner back of the depot, looking outside. He
Speaker 3: describes the so the beginning of the story takes place
Speaker 3: during the Antarctic summer, so whereas perpetually daytime, and he
Speaker 3: describes the sun as a great boiling eye in the
Speaker 3: sky that never sets. But as the winter comes closer,
Speaker 3: we get this part quote. A gust of wind scattered
Speaker 3: fine crystals of snow against the window, and he found
Speaker 3: himself wondering what the night would be like in this
Speaker 3: cold country. He imagined the sky dissolving to reveal the
Speaker 3: hard vault of stars, the gallay turning above him like
Speaker 3: a cog in a vast, unknowable engine, and behind it
Speaker 3: all the emptiness into which men hurled their prayers. It
Speaker 3: occurred to him that he could leave now, walk out
Speaker 3: into the long twilight, and keep going until the earth
Speaker 3: opened beneath him. And he found himself descending strange stairs
Speaker 3: while the world around him broke silently into snow and
Speaker 3: into night. Garner closed his eyes.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, haunting, perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I like again emphasized even there at the end,
Speaker 3: like the thing that he's dwelling for moments on horrible
Speaker 3: thoughts to him, thoughts about emptiness, about nothing beyond the emptiness,
Speaker 3: you know, his lack of faith in God. The empty
Speaker 3: expanses with nothing below, but then is strangely finding comfort
Speaker 3: into the idea of descending into this alien realm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, as I said earlier, one of the things I
Speaker 3: loved about this story was the horror evoked by the setting,
Speaker 3: the bleak emptiness of the Antarctic glacier, and especially the Crevass.
Speaker 3: If you read about Antarctic expeditions from people who have
Speaker 3: actually participated in them, you will discover that the terror
Speaker 3: of the crevass is absolutely real, and a threat about
Speaker 3: which anybody traveling across great distances of ice has to
Speaker 3: be almost constantly conscious. For example, I pulled up the
Speaker 3: text of a book called The Worst Journey in the World,
Speaker 3: written by absolletely Cherry Garrard, published in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 3: Cherry Garrard was a member of the famous Terra Nova
Speaker 3: expedition to the South Pole under Robert Falcon Scott a
Speaker 3: decade previous. Rob I know you have some stuff about
Speaker 3: this expedition as well, and this book provides a first
Speaker 3: hand account of the expedition and its struggles. If you
Speaker 3: do a keyword search in the text of this book
Speaker 3: for crevass, you get almost two hundred hits. It is
Speaker 3: constantly on their minds, and apart from the physical difficulty
Speaker 3: and danger of actually encountering them, the psychic toll of
Speaker 3: knowing the crevasses are out there does its own violence
Speaker 3: to the explorer. At one point, Cheery guard Rights quote,
Speaker 3: sometimes a blizzard is a very welcome rest after weeks
Speaker 3: of hard pulling, dragging yourself awake each morning, feeling as
Speaker 3: though you had only just gone to sleep, with the
Speaker 3: mental strain perhaps which working among crevasses and tails, it
Speaker 3: is most pleasant to be put to bed for two
Speaker 3: or three days. Even relatively shallow crevasses, which are sometimes
Speaker 3: only a few feet deep, you know, there are much
Speaker 3: shallower ones that are less visually impressive than what we're
Speaker 3: imagining in this story. Even the shallow ones can be
Speaker 3: dangerous and can cause fatal injury if you fall fall
Speaker 3: into them unexpectedly. You know, falling five feet the wrong
Speaker 3: way like that could be death. In Antarctica, a broken
Speaker 3: bone from a survivable fall can quickly turn into a
Speaker 3: death sentence. Down there, but many crevasses are much deeper
Speaker 3: than that, might be one hundred feet or more, some
Speaker 3: maybe hundreds of feet to the bottom. And he tells
Speaker 3: Cherry Garrard does tells of crossing and navigating around crevasses
Speaker 3: that he actually quotes a guy looking down into one
Speaker 3: and says that some of them are quote black as hell,
Speaker 3: just into darkness, vanishing into darkness below. And he talks
Speaker 3: about stretches of ice that are made more or less impassable,
Speaker 3: but because of how many crevasses there are. There's one
Speaker 3: place he's talking about where I don't think he's actually
Speaker 3: talking about passing it, but he's just talking about looking
Speaker 3: at a chaos of crevasses, particularly I think in a
Speaker 3: region where a glacier is sort of fanning out as
Speaker 3: it reaches close to the ocean. And the real horror
Speaker 3: is you often cannot see these deep gaps in the
Speaker 3: ice as you approach them, for multiple reasons. First, because
Speaker 3: of general difficulties with visibility on the ice even under
Speaker 3: relatively good weather conditions, and in a blizzard, forget about it,
Speaker 3: and a blizzard visibility is zero. But if you're trying
Speaker 3: to move under ideal weather conditions, even then it's sometimes
Speaker 3: just really hard to tell what you're looking at on
Speaker 3: the ice out in front of you. There are weird
Speaker 3: ways that that like light and shadows play against your eyes.
Speaker 3: Sometimes people report this, and Cherry Garard does too. There
Speaker 3: will be like what he calls these haystack formations of
Speaker 3: ice that they somehow don't really see until they're coming
Speaker 3: right upon them. That sometimes you don't see crevasses. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: visibility is difficult. But even more dangerous than that, many
Speaker 3: glacial crevasses can become covered by what are typically called
Speaker 3: snow bridges, so that they are not even visible from
Speaker 3: above until you put weight on the snow bridge and
Speaker 3: it collapses, dumping you into the chasm below.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a naturally occurring trapdoor, you know, that could
Speaker 2: just drop you into, you know again, a pit that
Speaker 2: maybe five feet deep and break your ankle, or one
Speaker 2: hundred feet deep and kill you outright.
Speaker 3: So to get around of this, expeditions use a number
Speaker 3: of techniques, some of which we actually see in this story.
Speaker 3: So going a long ways back, you use the technique
Speaker 3: of roping members of the expedition together, you know, so
Speaker 3: they would tie their bodies or their sledges and animals
Speaker 3: together with rope so that if one falls, the others
Speaker 3: can stop the fall and pull them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's telling, isn't it that there are mountaineering techniques
Speaker 2: that are used in order to deal with crevasses. You're
Speaker 2: just you're moving, you're not ascending necessarily, you're just moving
Speaker 2: across the landscape, and you need to be prepared like
Speaker 2: a mountaineer.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, and dealing with crevasses is part of mountaineering
Speaker 3: as well. They're only they're not only a thing in Antarctica.
Speaker 3: That's just a place where you're going to encounter a
Speaker 3: lot of crevasses that you will also find them in
Speaker 3: mountain glaciers. So yeah, there's there's the rope techniques. There's
Speaker 3: probing with poles, so like stabbing poles into the snow
Speaker 3: ahead of where you're moving to find soft spots where
Speaker 3: the pole sinks through. That can be very effective but
Speaker 3: obviously makes travel quite slow. There is one adaptation is
Speaker 3: a sacrificial attitude toward lead dogs and other animals maybe ponies,
Speaker 3: sometimes counting on the leading animals to fall through first,
Speaker 3: allowing the rest of the team to stop before hitting
Speaker 3: the gap.
Speaker 2: Which is of course horrifying in its own right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then also eventually experience. People with lots of
Speaker 3: experience traveling on glaciers learn visual cues to look for,
Speaker 3: so that they can sometimes spot even covered up crevasses
Speaker 3: due to characteristics of the surface ice like color or
Speaker 3: drift shape. But even you know, very very solid, well
Speaker 3: educated ice veterans won't spot it every time. There's nothing
Speaker 3: fool proof here. Modern technology does have some tools that
Speaker 3: these early Antarctic explorers did not have. You know, modern
Speaker 3: Antarctic expeditions can use sophisticated techniques like ground penetrating radar
Speaker 3: to image crevasses from above. But there is a maddening
Speaker 3: aspect to this because you might think that, oh, well,
Speaker 3: if you can make a map with ground penetrating radar
Speaker 3: of a particular area, and then you can just know
Speaker 3: in advance where all the crevasses will be. But that
Speaker 3: kind of radar based map will not be useful for
Speaker 3: very long, because a glacier is flowing and forever changing,
Speaker 3: and its surface will change substantially over relatively quick timespans.
Speaker 3: From what I was reading, it seems like not only
Speaker 3: over the years, but maybe even over the course of
Speaker 3: a few weeks or months, there can be substantial changes
Speaker 3: in the in the crevass landscape. Existing cracks clothes, new
Speaker 3: cracks open, All cracks move, some more quickly than others.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So Cravas's form because of physical stress on
Speaker 3: the ice, usually caused by the flow of the glacier. Overall,
Speaker 3: a glacier is a weird type of material to think
Speaker 3: about because it has some liquid like characteristics. Glaciers do flow,
Speaker 3: so it in a way makes sense to think of
Speaker 3: them as extremely slow moving frozen rivers, and yet they
Speaker 3: also have the brittle characteristics of ice. So while liquid
Speaker 3: water easily flows around a bend and has no problems
Speaker 3: speeding up or slowing down, you know, following the shape
Speaker 3: of a channel and obstacles within it, or speeding up
Speaker 3: going down a slope, ice flowing through a channel tends
Speaker 3: to succumb to brittle fracture when it is deformed, and
Speaker 3: this can happen for a number of reasons. Going around
Speaker 3: bends or obstacles in the underlying terrain changes in the
Speaker 3: direction or shape or speed of the glacier's flow, you know,
Speaker 3: so like a change in the slope of the ground
Speaker 3: beneath the glacier will cause it to flow faster, and
Speaker 3: that causes the glacier to stretch, and then it forms
Speaker 3: cracks in the upper part of the ice. You can
Speaker 3: also see these chaotic distributions of crevasses emerging in places
Speaker 3: where the glacier is stretched out horizontally. This is a
Speaker 3: rough analogy. I don't think it's perfect, but this kind
Speaker 3: of makes sense. Anything that might cause turbulence in the
Speaker 3: flow of liquid water through a space would have the
Speaker 3: potential to cause crevasses to form in a glacier flowing
Speaker 3: through that space. And then beyond that you've got the
Speaker 3: question of how do those devious snow bridges form. Usually
Speaker 3: this seems to happen from snow drift. So snow is
Speaker 3: being driven horizontally by wind, and this snow sticks to
Speaker 3: the ice on the sides of the crack in the glacier,
Speaker 3: and the snow adheres and piles up and up until
Speaker 3: the top of the crack is covered completely. But sometimes,
Speaker 3: you know, and so sometimes it can be snow filling
Speaker 3: in the crack, because so maybe it does go all
Speaker 3: the way down to the bottom, but it's just like
Speaker 3: loosely packed snow, or maybe it actually just forms a
Speaker 3: bridge over the top layer of the crack, and it's
Speaker 3: just an open drop below that.
Speaker 2: Oh, you included a photograph here in our outline. I
Speaker 2: encourage listeners to look for such images as well, because, man,
Speaker 2: you look in the background of this this image, Like
Speaker 2: in the foreground we see where the crack has been revealed,
Speaker 2: and there's some individuals traversing it, leaping over it. But
Speaker 2: in the background, like the same crack continues but is
Speaker 2: covered in snow, and at least in my eye, it
Speaker 2: just looks like a snowfield.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you, unless you really know what to look for,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't see it at all. And even some people
Speaker 3: who know what to look for might not catch it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's another really cool photo I came across regarding snow bridges,
Speaker 3: but from the other angle. So this was on a
Speaker 3: website called Antarctic glaciers dot org. This was a blog
Speaker 3: post by a glaciologist named Bethan Davies of Newcastle University
Speaker 3: in the UK, and the post is describing a little
Speaker 3: expedition where a group of researchers explored the inside of
Speaker 3: a fairly deep crevas on the glacier behind rothero research
Speaker 3: station on the Antarctic Peninsula. And so the small group
Speaker 3: of people they go down below the crevas. They like
Speaker 3: have to descend through a hole, and then they're going
Speaker 3: into this covered part of the crevas, so it feels
Speaker 3: like an ice cave. It has all these icicles and everywhere,
Speaker 3: and it's some parts are more white and other parts
Speaker 3: have more blue ice. So it's beautiful looking down at
Speaker 3: the cave part. But then there is one photo you
Speaker 3: can see if you scroll down rob where the camera
Speaker 3: is positioned looking up toward the surface in the crevas,
Speaker 3: where the gap is covered by a snowbridge, so no
Speaker 3: sky is visible, but you can see deep blue light
Speaker 3: bleeding through the thinnest parts of the snow cover in
Speaker 3: the gap, and it looks like Cherenkov radiation around it
Speaker 3: nuclear reactor.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's absolutely haunting.
Speaker 3: So I formally submit glacier crevasses as one of the
Speaker 3: true real life horror stories of mother nature of planet Earth.
Speaker 3: Beautiful in some ways, very very interesting to think about
Speaker 3: how they form and the power implied and the way
Speaker 3: glaciers flow everything that, you know, all of the strange
Speaker 3: processes that we don't really think about or are hard
Speaker 3: for us to picture that lead to their creation. But
Speaker 3: then also just when you're actually faced with one, how
Speaker 3: frightening it could be the idea of just plunging one
Speaker 3: hundred feet down into a narrow gap in the ice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're absolutely horrifying as just in our imagination.
Speaker 2: And when you dig into the history, we've the humans,
Speaker 2: human explorers have had horrifying encounters with them. We're not
Speaker 2: going to go through all of them. But you know,
Speaker 2: I want to come back to what we were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier, like does it make sense to rescue a
Speaker 2: dog from a crevass? Like is this a sensible move
Speaker 2: on the part of our protagonist or is this the
Speaker 2: protagonist being dumb or making that extra risky horror story decision.
Speaker 2: And again, I'm very touched on how important these dogs
Speaker 2: were to the people on these expeditions, both in terms
Speaker 2: of the practical necessity of having them and then also
Speaker 2: the companionship. But yeah, there's some historic precedents for this
Speaker 2: as well. For example, during the British Terra Nova expedition
Speaker 2: that we mentioned already to Antarctica from nineteen ten through
Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen. There are multiple accounts of this, but one
Speaker 2: quick account that I Ran across was a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three article from the US Naval Institute Heroism and Betrayal
Speaker 2: in Antarctica by Karen May and she points into this
Speaker 2: known clash between Cecil Mears and the expedition leader, Robert
Speaker 2: Falcon Scott. They clashed on numerous occasions, including when Mears
Speaker 2: refused Scott's order to rescue some fallen sled dogs from
Speaker 2: a crevass. Scott himself ended up entering the crevass himself
Speaker 2: to rescue the dogs.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I can only imagine this and some of these
Speaker 2: other tales were part of the inspiration and part of
Speaker 2: the research for the horror story we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: surely there are also accounts of not only dogs, but
Speaker 2: whole sledges and explorers being swallowed up by these as well.
Speaker 2: One of these occurred during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of
Speaker 2: nineteen eleven through nineteen fourteen. This was led by Douglas Mawson,
Speaker 2: who wrote about his experiences later in the book Home
Speaker 2: of the Blizzard I believe was published with some other
Speaker 2: titles later on as well. But here's an excerpt about
Speaker 2: a tragic event at a crevass which swallowed up expedition
Speaker 2: member Belgrave Edward Sutton menis his sledge and dogs in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, frantically waving to Mertz to bring up my sledge,
Speaker 2: upon which there was some alpine rope. I leaned over
Speaker 2: and shouted into the dark depths below. No sound came back,
Speaker 2: but the moaning of a dog caught on a shelf
Speaker 2: just visible one hundred and fifty feet below. The poor
Speaker 2: creature appeared to have broken its back, for it was
Speaker 2: attempting to set up with the front part of its body,
Speaker 2: while the hinder portion lay limp. Another dog lay motionless
Speaker 2: by its side, close by what appeared in the gloom
Speaker 2: to be the remains of the tent and a canvas
Speaker 2: tank containing food for three men for a fortnight. We
Speaker 2: broke back the edge of the and these another term,
Speaker 2: but they were referring to the crevas here, I believe,
Speaker 2: and took turns, leaning over, secured by a rope, calling
Speaker 2: into the darkness in the hope that our companion might
Speaker 2: be still alive. For three hours we called unceasingly, but
Speaker 2: no answering sound came back. The dog had ceased to
Speaker 2: moan and lay without a movement. A chill draft was
Speaker 2: blowing out of the abyss. We felt that there was
Speaker 2: little hope. Why had the first sledge escaped the crevasse.
Speaker 2: It seemed that I had been fortunate because my sledge
Speaker 2: had crossed diagonally, with a greater chance of breaking the
Speaker 2: snow lid. The sledges were within thirty pounds of the
Speaker 2: same weight. The explanation appeared to be that Ninnis had
Speaker 2: walked by the side of his sledge, whereas eye had
Speaker 2: crossed its sitting on the sledge. The whole weight of
Speaker 2: a man's body bearing on his foot is a formidable load,
Speaker 2: and no doubt was sufficient to smash the arch of
Speaker 2: the roof. By means of a fishing line, we ascertained
Speaker 2: that it was one hundred and fifty feet sheer to
Speaker 2: the ledge, on which the remains were seen On either side,
Speaker 2: the crevass descended into blackness. It seemed so very far
Speaker 2: down there, and the dogs looked so small that we
Speaker 2: got out the field glasses and could make out nothing more.
Speaker 2: By their aid. All our available rope was tied together,
Speaker 2: but the total length was insufficient to reach the ledge,
Speaker 2: and any idea of going below to investigate and to
Speaker 2: secure some of the food had to be abandoned.
Speaker 3: That is chilling.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely chilling, like the idea that the scale
Speaker 2: of the crevass was beyond and they're not even drawing
Speaker 2: their imagination into this, but just beyond the abilities of
Speaker 2: their equipment to even reach.
Speaker 3: You want another horror story from that book by Cherry Garrard, Sure, okay,
Speaker 3: And this actually actually bring us back to a couple
Speaker 3: of characters. You were just talking about Scott and Merrs
Speaker 3: on that expedition. So Cherry Garrard is writing about a
Speaker 3: section where they're crossing some ice and says, quote, we
Speaker 3: ran level for another two miles, mirrors and Scott on
Speaker 3: our left. We were evidently crossing many crevasses. Quite suddenly
Speaker 3: we saw the dogs of their team disappearing, following one another,
Speaker 3: just like dogs going down a hole after some animal.
Speaker 3: In a moment, wrote Scott, the whole team we're sinking.
Speaker 3: Two by two. We lost sight of them, each pair
Speaker 3: struggling for foothol Osman the leader exerted all his strength
Speaker 3: and kept foothold. It was wonderful to see him. The
Speaker 3: sledge stopped and we leapt aside the situation was clear.
Speaker 3: In another moment, we had actually been traveling along the
Speaker 3: bridge or snow covering of a crevass. The sledge had
Speaker 3: stopped on it, whilst the dogs hung in their harness
Speaker 3: in the abyss, suspended between the sledge and the leading dog.
Speaker 3: Why the sledge and ourselves didn't follow the dogs we
Speaker 3: shall never know. Oh wow, bridge of dogs.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and both of all these accounts we've been
Speaker 2: looking at here concerning the crevass like they it sounds
Speaker 2: to me like, yeah, you could basically just completely pass
Speaker 2: over one of these snow bridges and you would never
Speaker 2: know that, like one hundred and fifty foot drop was
Speaker 2: just waiting there for you, and you just happened to
Speaker 2: not trigger it, and then the next one could get you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They don't always collapse. So yeah, very likely you
Speaker 3: have been over crevasses and crossed a snowbridge without realizing it. Wow,
Speaker 3: I mean not you the person listening, or you wrong,
Speaker 3: the Antarctic explorer, the glacial mountaineer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Though obviously if we have listeners out there who
Speaker 2: have any experience with crevasses of one form or another,
Speaker 2: definitely right in and tell us all about it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, so scariest non speculative thing I've thought about
Speaker 3: in a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great story. Again. I love its
Speaker 2: use of history and an extreme real world environment, but
Speaker 2: also involving this wonderful speculative elopment, you know, bringing in
Speaker 2: that mythos flavor, hinting at this other world Cyclopean architecture
Speaker 2: and the deep and so forth. Just a just a
Speaker 2: wonderful little short story.
Speaker 3: To end on a positive note, I would say, I
Speaker 3: am really inspired by these stories of crevass rescues as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, they're not all doom and gloom like.
Speaker 2: There are accounts certainly of individuals, you know, successfully being
Speaker 2: rescued from crevasses, dogs being rescued from crevasses. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if I mentioned it already, but dogs are
Speaker 2: also very useful in crevass rescue. All right, well, we're
Speaker 2: going to go ahead and close the book here on
Speaker 2: Gramore of Horror Volume two. We hope that everyone out
Speaker 2: there enjoyed our discussion of these two short stories, and
Speaker 2: certainly we would love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 2: if you have thoughts on the crevass or on I
Speaker 2: have no mouth, and I must scream you have thoughts
Speaker 2: on the authors involved in these tales or other works
Speaker 2: that they wrote, write in We'd love to hear from you,
Speaker 2: and we should also go ahead and point out, Hey,
Speaker 2: the next Halloween is just around the corner, so if
Speaker 2: you have suggestions for next year, if you're like you
Speaker 2: two should totally read this story in this story by
Speaker 2: this author and this author, go ahead and write in
Speaker 2: we would love suggestions. You know, any headstart we can
Speaker 2: get on our selection process is always a good thing.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primary a science and culture podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays, and then
Speaker 2: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.