Episode 22! On Short Stories with John Langan

[Dan Jones]

Christopher and I are joined once more by horror writer John Langan, whose great horror novel The Fisherman finally is out now in the UK, an inexplicable seven years after being first published in most other territories.

John talks to us about the health and wellbeing of Laird Barron, one of the other members of the modern horror brat pack, who suffered recent well-publicised ill-health. We also talk about the methods and madness of writing short stories, touch upon a few of John's acclaimed pieces of short fiction, and the relationship between geography and horror.

Elsewhere Lieutenant Bungalow returns, enlightened, from a trip to Olympus Mons where he found the Salmon of Insight (insight, insight, insight). Captain Halfmikcarton, however, remains unconvinced.

Next Month
Join us next month when we'll be joined by filmmakers Gregg Hale and Ed Sanchez, who'll be talking about Jonathan Glazer's masterful 2013 horror film Under The Skin, as well as their forthcoming project Black Velvet Fairies. They'll also be chatting to us about the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest and most original horror films of all time, The Blair Witch Project.

 

[Provincial]

There was a brief bit of chat about the novel “Footfall”, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in this issue.

I have always thought that the authors must have been shooting the breeze one night when they were really drunk and tried to describe the most unlikely hero they could think of and came up with a massively overweight, balding but red-headed, middle-aged, homeless biker, probably massively tattooed, and definitely wearing a truss. Having come up with the lead character they then had to work out how he could possibly become a hero, and enjoyed the speculation so much that they wrote the book together - but always with their tongues lodged firmly in their cheeks, right down to the point where the military were recruiting science fiction writers to decide their response to a potential alien invasion.

I really enjoyed the novel, and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who will listen, but I don’t think it should be taken too seriously, as I am pretty certain the authors didn’t. They didn’t work hard on justifying why any alien race would choose to invade Earth, they just made something up.

 

[Astro Pen]

I read The Mote in God's Eye Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and thought them a weird co authoring because they have distinct styles and I felt I could feel the difference flipping as I worked through the book. Is Footfall the same or are the blue and red now a smoother purple?
Some sections of 'Mote' felt like they were from the 1950s and others from the late 1960s. It was very odd, though I loved the book anyway.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Some sections of 'Mote' felt like they were from the 1950s and others from the late 1960s. It was very odd, though I loved the book anyway.

Me also.