This week has seen a bunch of Gothic audio goodies on the web.
Librivox offers a second collection of scary short stories, drawn, as ever, from the public domain, and read by enthusiastic volunteers.
Pseudopod keeps churning out horror audio, including a sad, beautiful flash piece called "Rite of Atonement", and a powerful, carefully wrought war Gothic, "Western Front." The latter is thought to be pervasive, but is actually rare, and rarer still done well.
Meanwhile, Tales of Horror continues its archival romp through the golden age of radio. You can sample "The Grave," a twisted, gore-free mind game about murder, guilt, and secrets. They also published Peter Cushing's reading of The Legend of the Golden Vampires, an enthusiastic mix of Stoker's Dracula, bravura orientalism, and steady violence. Also from the archives is a version of Ambrose Bierce's "Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge," via ClassicRadioDrama.
"Western Front" was really quite good, wasn't it? I'm not usually too impressed with contemporary horror fiction, and generally prefer the classics, but I really enjoyed this one.
Are you subscribed to Well-Told Tales? Very similar to Pseudopod, although they try to hit the full spectrum of contemporary pulp, with fantasy, crime, and "hard-boiled" fiction in addition to horror. I think the reading and production values are a bit nicer than Pseudopod, although that might be a matter of taste.
Posted by: HP | November 21, 2007 at 16:00
I was very impressed by "Western Front," too, HP. It started with a bunch of familiar WWI British tropes, then sheered off into a fine, surreal angle.
Adding Well-Told to the RSS monster now. Thanks.
Pseudopod reflects contemporary horror pretty well, I think. There's a bit of splatterpunk, or what that has developed into. They have some current monsters (zombies, vampires).
Do you listen to Escape Pod? They differ in publishing older fiction, as well as new stuff.
Posted by: Bryan Alexander | November 23, 2007 at 00:19