And the meters are over in the red

[sovay]

Courtesy of moon_custafer: "The Voice of Death" (Journey into Unknown Worlds #6, 1951). I have become suddenly obsessed with trying to trace the antecedents of this proto-Nigel-Kneale conceit of the recording of a death being contagiously deadly, because the mid-century feels incredibly late for it to show up. It feels like the kind of urban legend that should have started to filter into fiction as soon as the mechanism existed to support it, cf. the theory of residual haunting which can be traced as far back as the early nineteenth century and really seems to take off with the commercial proliferation of recording technologies, but I am drawing a blank on potential earlier iterations even though it feels like a horror evergreen. All that's coming to mind are later takes, like Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm (1983) or Gemma Files' "each thing i show you is a piece of my death" (2009). It doesn't feel as though it came, like so much of the prevailing aesthetic of EC Comics, from Grand Guignol. It does feel like the kind of parapsychological sci-fi horror William Sloane was writing in the '30's, which just indicates it was a viable mode of weird fiction. It has obvious predecessors in mind-annihilating art like Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow (1895), but the media aspect is what I am specifically curious about: the real-time capture of something that cannot be survived contact with, a transferrable dying. My suspicion is that it comes out of radio, where the foley terror of a needle-drop would be most effectively concentrated, but I have not heard anywhere near enough Inner Sanctum (1941–52) or Quiet, Please (1947–49) or any of a number of other suspects of old-time radio to be sure. It could be as old as Dr. Seward dictating his notes into a phonograph. Suggestions appreciated. In the meantime, I am stuck listening to Kate Bush's "Experiment IV" (1986).

Comments

[selkie]

I dun think you want my suggestions at this hour, it seems fraught, but I will ponder.

[sovay]

I dun think you want my suggestions at this hour, it seems fraught, but I will ponder.

It just feels impossible for 1951 to have been the first fictional instance of this idea, but I can't come up with anything earlier! I feel like I must be missing something obvious.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

You're right, it feels like there should be 10000 examples, and yet I'm drawing a blank too! All I can think of is Becquer's "Miserere" (from the 1860s), which features a mysterious religious song (unfinished due to sudden, violent death) that drives a man who tries to finish it to insanity and death, but there must be better examples! (I approve of your music, by the way!)

[sovay]

You're right, it feels like there should be 10000 examples, and yet I'm drawing a blank too!

I even resorted to the internet, but it is amazing how unhelpful all of the relevant search terms are.

All I can think of is Becquer's "Miserere" (from the 1860s), which features a mysterious religious song (unfinished due to sudden, violent death) that drives a man who tries to finish it to insanity and death, but there must be better examples!

Oh, that's great, though. I've never encountered that story and its conceit would fit right into any number of contemporary horror anthologies. Also Ruthanna Emrys and Anne Pillsworth at Tor.com's Reading the Weird should probably know about it.

(I approve of your music, by the way!)

(Thank you! It got in my head on the second page of the comic and hasn't left yet!)

[asakiyume]

I agree: it does seem like it should have come up earlier!

I wrote a story about recording technologies that stole/trapped the sounds they recorded, and at that time, I remember reading that when Bartok was making folk recordings, some people feared exactly that (or maybe that's what inspired my story; can't remember which way it went). That's not the same as a transferrable death, though.

That story of Gemma's was AMAZING; I loved it.

[sovay]

I agree: it does seem like it should have come up earlier!

It feels almost like one of Kipling's weird tales—he has one called "Wireless" (1902) in which a reckless combination of chemically assisted cocktails and very early radio experimentation accidentally turns a consumptive chemist's assistant into a receiver for the spirit of John Keats. But if it were Kipling, I wouldn't need to be asking about it, because I'd remember it in the same way as "Wireless." I have an entire collection of his short horror and speculative fiction in storage.

I wrote a story about recording technologies that stole/trapped the sounds they recorded, and at that time, I remember reading that when Bartok was making folk recordings, some people feared exactly that (or maybe that's what inspired my story; can't remember which way it went).

I don't think I've read that story of yours! Can it be found anywhere handy?

That story of Gemma's was AMAZING; I loved it.

It's one of her best. It was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award and I still think it could have won.

[asakiyume]

To my great surprise, the zine that published it still maintains an archive online--the story is here. I haven't reread it... I wonder how I'd find it now...

[sovay]

To my great surprise, the zine that published it still maintains an archive online--the story is here. I haven't reread it... I wonder how I'd find it now...

It's great. The conceit is horrifying. And whether you wrote it or not as a metaphor for extractive research practices, it works beautifully as one. And of course the silence comes from the dead, wrapping the story back around to the essential (see below to <lj user=ethelmay) uncanniness of recordings. I wish I knew anthologies you could sent it to for reprint. I am out of touch with almost everything.

[asakiyume]

Thank you very much! After posting the reply, I reread it, which made me remember writing it. I like it! I had fun writing it.

I've been feeling VERY Little Wittgenstein about my writing recently (many rejections), which makes me very grateful to have among my friends people who do enjoy what I write.

[sovay]

I've been feeling VERY Little Wittgenstein about my writing recently (many rejections), which makes me very grateful to have among my friends people who do enjoy what I write.

*hugs* for the rejections. Does it help or make it worse if I ask how the Polity novel is doing?

I like pretty much everything you write, which has nothing to do with you being my friend, it's just a perk because it means I don't have to go looking to find it.

[asakiyume]

The polity novel is still advancing! It's inching its way toward a climax. And I will make sure it gets into the world one way or another (Annorlunda Press has suspended publishing, and in any case they didn't do novels, but maybe the publisher will make an exception--but if not, there are other ways)

And your last sentence is truly bolstering. I feel the same way about your writing, which sounds under the circumstance like politesse, but it's actually just *true*.

[sovay]

The polity novel is still advancing! It's inching its way toward a climax.

Yay!

And I will make sure it gets into the world one way or another (Annorlunda Press has suspended publishing, and in any case they didn't do novels, but maybe the publisher will make an exception--but if not, there are other ways)

Aqueduct was my first thought. Tachyon if you have an agent. Small Beer is currently closed to submissions. Neon Hemlock is like Annorlunda, novellas only. After that I suspect I am useless for the state of the field, but will enthusiastically promote whenever it is relevant, by whatever route.

I feel the same way about your writing, which sounds under the circumstance like politesse, but it's actually just *true*.

Thank you.

[asakiyume]

I'll copy what you say into a document and save it. Who knows what the state of publishing will be when I finish, but at least I'll have a place to start--thank you again <3

[ethelmay]

Not the same as the camera stealing souls, but it sounds a little bit similar. (And I recall Edward Lear sketching in Albania, I think it was, and people looking at his drawing of the landscape and shouting "Shaitan!")

[sovay]

Not the same as the camera stealing souls, but it sounds a little bit similar. (And I recall Edward Lear sketching in Albania, I think it was, and people looking at his drawing of the landscape and shouting "Shaitan!")

I love how all of these stories revolve around the idea of the act of recording as inherently uncanny, which of course it is: it disrupts time.

[thisbluespirit]

because the mid-century feels incredibly late for it to show up.

It does, doesn't it? (I see we're all just unhelpfully saying the same thing, heh.)

[sovay]

It does, doesn't it? (I see we're all just unhelpfully saying the same thing, heh.)

I am living in hope that someone will eventually turn up in comments and name the very famous example we have all been overlooking and we can stop feeling collectively haunted by the concept!

[thisbluespirit]

On the other hand, us all remaining haunted by it instead is very apposite. XD

[sovay]

On the other hand, us all remaining haunted by it instead is very apposite.

That had crossed my mind.

[gwynnega]

I can't think of any earlier examples, but I agree that there must be something.

[sovay]

I can't think of any earlier examples, but I agree that there must be something.

It's maddening, although hopefully not in a Chambers-esque way.

[skygiants]

I am fascinated by this research! I'm working on an article right now about the cyclical nature of archives & apocalypse in fiction (apocalypse --> archive to preserve the remnants of knowledge --> apocalypse generated from the Terrible Knowledge in the archive) and this feels like a kind of incredibly direct metaphor for that (death --> recording --> new death).

[sovay]

I'm working on an article right now about the cyclical nature of archives & apocalypse in fiction (apocalypse --> archive to preserve the remnants of knowledge --> apocalypse generated from the Terrible Knowledge in the archive) and this feels like a kind of incredibly direct metaphor for that (death --> recording --> new death).

(a) Your article sounds great; I would love to read it when it's published.

(b) The cycle you describe makes me think of a line from handful_ofdust's review of Marcin Wrona's Demon (2015): "a gun you bury only to watch your children dig it up again, try to use it and blow their own hands off."

(c) If I manage to trace this motif further back than "The Voice of Death," I will let you know! I just can't believe it popped into existence in finished form in a five-page horror comic from the '50's. It's too weird and too close to folklore and all the recording-related beliefs and fictions people have been citing in comments. I still keep coming up with later examples only, or adjacent concepts like David Langford's "Different Kinds of Darkness" (2000), which remains one of the best sfnal takes I have encountered on the idea of something you just cannot look at.

[asakiyume]

Seconding Sovay on this sounding like an amazing article. The archive as both the bulwark against and the catalyst of apocalypse. Cool. I guess it gets to whether knowledge is the thing that needs to be saved from the apocalypse or the cause of the apocalypse. I can see how as a species we feel confused, but, as Taylor Swift helpfully tells us, it's us: we're the problem--not the knowledge.

[chanter1944]

As a towering oldtime radio nerd over here, the device of death transmissible via radio sounds like something Lights Out would have used. Quiet Please did get if not close to the idea, then at least in the same general vicinity as the idea, with a semi-haunted camera intended to capture the moment of death on film. "Thirteen and eight!" As for Lights Out, I'm not going to explore that particular avenue to find out whether or not it ever did run with death as contagious in itself; that show gives me a case of the horrified disturbances much of the time for sheer, unrelenting darkness, title pun not intended. I can handle Inner Sanctum, I can handle dramatized Lovecraft, but Lights Out... brrrrr. Tag out.

[sovay]

As a towering oldtime radio nerd over here, the device of death transmissible via radio sounds like something Lights Out would have used.

Good to know! It gives me somewhere to look. spatch wasn't sure if the conceit would have been gruesome enough for Lights Out, but we can check it out, assuming a complete enough—the irony—record of episodes survived.

(His company, the Post-Meridian Radio Players, famously recreated the full version of Arch Oboler's "Chicken Heart" for a fundraiser in 2005 and subsequently for First Night in 2008. spatch was Dr. Alberts.)

Quiet Please did get if not close to the idea, then at least in the same general vicinity as the idea, with a semi-haunted camera intended to capture the moment of death on film.

I just bet that worked out for all concerned.

I see that a media scholar named Richard J. Hand has produced two books, Terror on the Air! Horror Radio in America, 1931–1952 (2006) and Listen in Terror: British Horror Radio from the Advent of Broadcasting to the Digital Age (2014), which may be worth my tracking down if I think this idea really came from the airwaves.

[chanter1944]

It definitely sounds gruesome enough for Lights Out, at least to me, assuming they'd have milked both the lead-up to and the moment(s) of death for all they were worth. Shudder.

I... erm. I mean no offense whatsoever when I say I might not go investigating that recreated audio just at the moment. I've heard the original twice, and that's plenty for me. I'll need to be in a suitable frame of mind before I click.

Re Thirteen And Eight (that's both an exclamation throughout the episode and its title): Oddly enough, the plot device *did* seem to work out better than expected, at least for one character. I won't spoil you, in case you want to investigate.