Old ship guys and devil dogs, botanical... dragons?! and Ryan "sinks in to a deep fantasy" only to face his cohosts' torment. Plus, TREMORS! Spoiler: the gang loves this tale, and we hope you do too. Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pollinating plots from our seventh book in the collection, ‘Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic,’ edited by Daisy Butcher (yes, really!). In this episode, our featured story is: The Guardian of Mystery Island by Edmond Nolcini
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading Negative Space by B. R. Yeager; drinking Standard Proof Wildflower Rye, infused with honeysuckle for some reason.
Damien is reading The House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias; drinking a Shipwreck: bourbon, dark rum, lime, simple, mint.
Ryan is reading The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan; drinking Campbeltown Journey blended scotch whisky.
If you liked this week’s story, check out American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Up next: The Ash Tree by M. R. James
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Ryan: Jess, can we get a confirmation on your feelings about Tremors? I was just trying to
Jessica: think of other lovable himbos that would fit what we were talking about, and I was thinking about Ken from the Barbie movie, I feel like is a real recent example of a himbo who goes on some adventures
Damien: but himbo ironically, , it's still, it's still Greta Gerwig. So
Ryan: I concur with that. And I don't mean to be that guy, but I'm going to be, you didn't answer the question about Tremors. Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're Whiskey and the Weird. Here we are in our seventh season and it's just amazing how much we've grown. From our roots in season one when we covered From the Depths, to the fruits we discovered in season six when we read The Night Wire.
Whiskey and the Weird is proud to once again till the soil of the [00:01:00] British Library's Tales of the Weird series. It is. Each season, we cover one volume in this acclaimed series and each episode we dig deep into one story. They always contain a full spoiler summary by two of the best story summarizers in the business. Make sure you read the story first and listen second, unless you're crazy.
Damien: You insane maniac.
Ryan: We're gleaning from evil roots. Killer tales of the Botanical Gothic edited by Daisy Butcher. And yes, folks. That's her real name.
Damien: I love that we got a tweet about that. I thought that was perfect. That's right. Daisy butcher. Is that real? Absolutely.
Ryan: And now the sun lies low in the West and the soft light of the golden hour has begun.
Join us if you please. In the [00:02:00] garden, and let us see what has germinated from the minds of the best writers of yesteryear. Jess is our master story planner and she's here to tell us what story we're reaping from tonight. The
Jessica: Guardians of Mystery Island by Edmond Nolcini.
Ryan: I really like how you gave it your all on
Damien: that title.
Thank you. It was really rich. I felt the verberations from here.
Jessica: That's how excited I am to talk about this island.
Damien: And it's Guardian. Let's not. As excited.
Ryan: Oh yes. But before we get to that, friends, we've got some bar talk to do. Damien, my constant gardener friend, what are you drinking tonight? ,
Damien: Tonight I decided to go a little thematic.
So I didn't have a new bourbon or whiskey to try. So I went with Meld Puncher's Chance, but I mixed it in equal parts with a nice dark rum. I put in a heavy dose of fresh [00:03:00] lime juice, a touch of simple syrup, and I garnished with mint leaves and that my friends. Is the shipwreck cocktail, equal parts, rum, and bourbon.
You need to use a dark rum, light rum just as going to do it for you. It's obviously very boozy, but it's a little bit of a dark and stormy minus the ginger beer and a little bit of a, just what would end up being a whiskey smash. So it's smashing your dark and stormy. So why not call it a shipwreck?
Am I right? It's easy drinking. It actually goes down a lot smoother than you would think, but using a fresh lime juice in anything and it's going to go down easy. And prevent scurvy. I haven't had a bout of scurvy in at least three weeks. So I am good to go. It sounds like a terrible joke, but I like the name of it.
How dare you? How dare you knock it before you try it? Says the guy who made a, an unaged shrub and that was also terrible. Reap the consequences of that pretty, pretty readily. Let's see, what have I read, watched, or [00:04:00] otherwise? So I did read Gabino Iglesias's new book, House of Bone and Grain. I was really thrilled.
I loved that. , the devil takes you home by a Gabino Iglesias. Had a chance to read that a couple of years back. Absolutely adored it. he's a contemporary horror writer, but he's like a modern magical realist in that he's like taking those Gabrielle Garcia Marquez., but he's also like giving a Quentin Tarantino angle with the level of action and like thuggery that goes on and then blends a little bit of Hispanic or Latino, superstition and maybe some like a pagan religion. It's really fun.
He introduces these magical elements to his stories. This one is a bit about, I mean, it's a pretty cut and dry tale of just vengeance. A group of late teenage, early twenties boys on Puerto Rico having just been ravaged by a hurricane. Are dealing with the death of one of their mothers an assassination actually.
[00:05:00] And so they go on this plot of revenge and it is, it's, I love Gabino Iglesias is writing. I just love it. He's very good at balancing just brutal violence along with internalizing those emotions that are driving that violence along with sometimes the inanity and the chaos that just comes from nothing other than not knowing, not having a plan and not knowing what to do.
And then all of a sudden you fold in like merfolk and. Well, you got this tale. So that's the house of bone and rain by Gabino Iglesias. It just came out. I tore through it easily. Really loved it. Highly. I'm
Ryan: excited that you read that by the time this goes to air, I will have had the chance to interview him for our local bookstore here in St.
Petersburg when he comes to promote that book. So that'll be a hoot. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. I'm really excited to meet him. I'm excited to read the book. And I hope that goes well. So if you're listening and you're in St. Petersburg I hope you came out to that.
Jessica: I hope I saw you there.
Ryan: I hope you were
Damien: there. What about you, Jess? What are you up to?
Jessica: I [00:06:00] bought a couple of new bottles of thematic alcohol.
Damien: Hashtag thematic alcohol. Thank you.
Jessica: And it's okay. This is the standard proof wildflower rye. Okay. infused with honeysuckle. Oh God. It's fine. Like it's going
Ryan: from, it's going from bad to worse here, folks.
Jessica: If you've had the, like the Jack Daniels honey whiskey that you can buy that already has the honey flavor in it,
Damien: which is bad,
Jessica: which is bad, but you can since
Damien: college,
Jessica: right. But you can drink a lot of it. This is just that I think where
Damien: you want to lose all your teeth or get a very bad belly ache.
Jessica: Yeah, but you, it goes down very easily.
Of course it does. It's like drinking honey. Oh
Damien: man, Jess, you're making me sad right now. You're buying wildflower honey infused honeysuckle bourbon. Hey, I like the
Jessica: theme. I like the theme.
Damien: Fine.
Jessica: Yeah, that's as close as I could get. She wasn't going to do
Damien: any more gin. So, not a
Jessica: gin, not a gin [00:07:00] guy, I guess.
And then I recently read the book Negative Space by B. R. Yeager. I think it's relatively new, but maybe not. Maybe I just saw it for the first time. It is like a book about these incredibly depressed teens living in an incredibly depressing town that is plagued by suicide. And to deal with that, they start taking a, just like a bunch of mystery drugs.
And one of them like alters reality and affects the things you can see. It was incredibly compelling for being so, really horrifically sad it has really good pacing to it it's worth reading if you want a reading experience that you are not expecting, I think, a real fast moving, slow depressing, suicide drug.
Damien: Yeah, That's what I want. She's selling it. Happy summer, [00:08:00] everyone.
Jessica: Honestly, it also has a really cool cover. I like the cover a lot and that's a flash that
Damien: cover. Let's see it.
Jessica: Well, I don't know where it is now. I'm in the office. It's like being replumbed. There's nothing in here besides like the.
Serial killer plastic. Are the plumbers
Damien: wanging pipes? I'm just curious.
Jessica: Uh, he did wang a couple of new pipes right into the wall.
Damien: We got some pipe wanging. Great way to start off the app.
Jessica: Ryan, what are you thinking?
Ryan: I'm drinking straight whiskey. Oh, what a boring man. I know. I'm actually drinking whiskey It is scotch and I'm drinking whiskey from my favorite scotch region Which is hard to get here in the United States So everybody knows about the Highlands and the Islas But probably not a lot of United States scotch drinkers know about Campbelltown and there are there used to be four distilleries I think in Campbelltown and now I think they're down to two [00:09:00] and there, these are very difficult whiskeys to find in the United States, at least here in Florida.
But I was happy when I went to the Total Wine store and I found a blended Campbelltown whiskey that Total Wine put together. Oh, they're calling it the Campbelltown Journey. So, I know exactly what whiskeys went into create this blend because there's just not that many distilleries. And I happen to like both of them.
It's a Campbelltown blend, so you know which two are involved. You know what they are. Yeah, absolutely. The Springbank and the Glen Scotia. I bought this whiskey for the Hey, welcome to my house. Here's a whiskey bottle. Oh, cool. Um, yep. And it's delicious. So I was in a bit of a hurry tonight before we recorded and I just, I needed to grab something that I didn't have to think a lot about.
And this is a good whiskey. So I dumped it
Damien: into a jar. Right. Oh, no, that's Jess. Sorry. I may
Ryan: dump it into a jar by the end.
Damien: Well, let me ask you, if you have the welcome to my house, here's a whiskey. Is it served on one of those dog butler trays? By
Ryan: my dog butler in
Damien: fact. Oh [00:10:00] good. Does your dog butler have a name?
Is it something cool like Bonesy
Ryan: or? No, it's something doggy like Coco. Coco. Oh, okay. Coco the dog. She puts on a little bow tie and serves whiskey to people as they come in. How classy.
Damien: Yeah. That is pretty classy. You do like to class it up. Very cool.
Ryan: As for what I've been, what I've been enjoying I went on vacation recently and there's nothing I like more on vacation than to be able to sink into a deep fantasy.
Um, and I picked one,
Damien: I don't think I want to continue. Can we just skip right to the summary? I hate all of you. I want to slip deep into a
Jessica: fantasy People pay a lot for that. So I got a book probably heard of
Ryan: before called 50 shades of gray Finally some truth No, I picked up a book I've really been wanting to read for a long time by Richard Swan called the justice of kings it's a dark fantasy novel, and the premise is that they are these [00:11:00] wandering characters that are called justices that function like lawyer, judge, and executioner all in one.
Judge Dredd? Like Judge
Jessica: Dredd. Like Judge Dredd,
Ryan: exactly. They keep the land in check. And they have
Jessica: never read any books. We've only watched
Damien: movies starring Sylvester Stallone.
Ryan: They have a certain number of very limited magical powers, usually related to compelling the truth to be spoken when they're interviewing potential criminals.
Wonder Woman. Um, this story is told from the perspective of his young assistant who's training to become a justice. Wonder Years. The writing is phenomenal. Every chapter ends in a way that catches you off guard, surprises you, and yet drives the narrative forward. You think everything that is happening, like, oh, that's just a little detail he's thrown in.
Nope. That plays an important role in what's coming next. , the larger structure is made up of all of the pieces that have come before it. So it's incredibly well plotted, incredibly well structured. Mr. Magorium's [00:12:00] Wonder Emporium. When you read about Richard Swann, you learned that he was an attorney before before becoming a writer.
And so I think what I've discovered is that he just took all the people that used to be in his office and made them fantasy characters. So these are the adventure. This is the fantasy adventure of an attorney, his paralegal and his office manager.
Jessica: That's really funny.
Ryan: The Office. Yeah. it is, it, about three quarters of the way through the book without giving anything away it takes a hard left turn into some horror stuff which I loved.
Oh, cool. Okay. It's a trilogy. I am almost finished with the second book and I will move right on to the third. These are five star reads for me all the way around. Oh, wow. So that's the justice of Kings by Richard Swan. All right. But before we start recommending banal movies, uh, ad nauseum.
Damien: Don't you dare not judge dread like you just did.
Okay, sir.
Ryan: Listen, I'm a fan of the live action masters of the universe movie, so I don't have any room to talk. Oh, wow. That's a,
Damien: That's a bold claim. [00:13:00]
Ryan: Let's talk about our author and our publication info for tonight. So for the second episode in a row. Daisy Butcher has found a writer whose biography is lost to time and space.
Love it. The World Wide Web has heard of Edward Nolcini in a singular instance. And that is, as the author of this story.
Jessica: Perfect, great.
Ryan: Right. So one tiny additional fact available to us from the original publication is that he was a doctor because it's published under the name of Dr. Edmund Nolcini. Was he a doctor of medicine?
Of philosophy? Of theosophy? We have no idea.
Damien: Plant sciences.
Ryan: Perhaps, I, what I can tell you is a little bit about the magazine the story was published in. It's one I don't think we've talked about before, and that's The Black Cat, which was founded in Boston in 1895 as a venue for short stories, featuring particularly new [00:14:00] writers.
Apologizing in advance, because I am going to butcher this guy's name, but Herman Umstetter was the editor. And one cool thing he did was he paid writers based on the strength of the story, according to him, rather than the word count. So between that and his willingness to buy stories from unpublished writers, the magazine was an almost immediate success.
Umstetter kept the zine going until 1912, when he sold it to Mr. Samuel Umstetter. Casino who ran it for seven years before selling it to Fox Film in 1919 And they there it lasted a year. They didn't do a very good job Apparently a brief revival occurred in 1922, but by 1923 the black cat was gone forever
Jessica: R.
I. P
Ryan: R. I. P. The magazine focused, as I mentioned, on stories of the unusual and unique, but Umstader specifically avoided horror. Famous writers who appeared in its pages [00:15:00] include Jack London, O. Henry, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry Miller, and Rex Stout. Two anthologies of stories from the Black Cat have been published.
The first one's called Through the Forbidden Gates and Other Stories, and that was published in 1903. And then after a short break in 2011, The Man Who Found Zero was published. So a little bit of a, little bit of a gap there.
Damien: Just a wee bit. Oh rest time.
Ryan: The the first is All but impossible to find and I saw only one copy of the second on ebay So if you've got one of these hanging out in your attic, then you're probably in the money a little bit maybe who knows?
Who knows? So that's all I know about. Dr Edmund Nolcini and I wish I could tell you more about the black cat, but there's not a lot out there about it either So that's it and that's going to take us to our story summary damien. I think you've got that for us tonight
Damien: I do. What a man of mystery, Dr.
Edmund [00:16:00] Nolcini. And so it's apropos that you wrote a story called The Guardian. Of Mystery Island. So without further ado, a summary of said story in just under, oh, let's say six minutes.
Sam Lennardson is chatting up an old fishermen on the shores of. Orr Maine, that's or with two R's, about the previous night's haul and also why, is there a flipped boat near the coast? Anyway, in a barely intelligible spate of dialogue, Tom, maybe, is his name, the Old Salt, explains there's a cluster of islands along the horizon around ten miles off the shore and how the furthest island allegedly contains the long lost treasure of Captain Kidd's pirating adventures, but that It's also guarded by some underwater serpents, maybe, and a demon dog, definitely, with very fiery eyes.
Okay, so Sam, naturally intrigued, but also prickishly looking to solve the mystery of Mystery Island and prove the legends wrong, sails his little dory to the island. A dory is a small rowboat. Let's put it that way. It's pretty smooth sailing [00:17:00] as he approaches the ominous and highly vegetal island with looming cliffs surrounding it.
A kind of docile cove, until a serious gust sends Sam and his boat crashing into the isle itself. He's startled, a bit shaken up, but Sam drags his dory up deeper into the pine and fir jungle, only to come face to snoot with the legendary devil dog. Oh no! Lying beneath a lean to. Yeah, no, it's not a devil dog.
It's not anything near being that scary. It's just a regular dog. Just have to be really old and fairly large and looks to be a Mastiff. And he also looks as though he needs quote, a blanket and a kennel more than the souls of the wary traveler. So upon noticing Sam, the dog lets out a tired woof and bounds through the thicket.
Sam, of course, curious, follows the dog and the dog ends up guiding Lennartson to a very aged and vine covered shack with an even [00:18:00] older, frailer, but less vine covered woman inside. He's all, um, gee, are you okay? And she's all. Pierre, and then spouts a bunch of French, which as luck would have it, Sam is fluent in.
So anyway, she just goes on and on talking about how the Bastille has just fallen. So I broke out my chronograph and I saw that this tale was written in the late 1800s, but the Bastille falling and it takes place in present day. The Bastille falling would have been well, late 1700s, I believe 1789 specifically during the French revolution.
So that is a hundred years prior to the story's publication in the present day in the story. Lenderson's in Oz. He's wondering how does she really know this or what is happening? And she keeps going on this. begotten tale of her empire falling and the White Queen needing to be safe housed, so she's babbling, essentially.
And then the Grand Madame, as she's [00:19:00] come to be known in the story and by Sam, narrates some foreshadowing backstory. She starts treating Sam as her commander, or count, or viscount, she starts speaking of a devilweed, quote, endowed with the cruel instincts and passion of a viper. That happens to be contained in a gold chest, which she has been tasked to transport out and away from the now ruined France.
What in the witchy ramblings of Le Lune Royale is she going on about? Who knows? Anyway, she tells us the dog is named Roland. So that's nice. And then she curses the Island and then she loves dogs with old man names. Yeah it's good. So then she curses the Island and then she dies and Sam arranges her arms nicely, probably in that crisscross shape, and sets off to find this treasure box, didn't she say something about a gold box?
Ooh, how exciting. So he cuts through some of the thicket and encounters this massive pulsing, almost breathing in his description plant. It's [00:20:00] the devil weed that grandma referenced it's thick and sprawling tendrils, some of them hanging like cables off the sides of a rocky cliff and others coiled and squirming around a very scary center mass at the top of the Ridge and before Sam could.
Say Aubrey too, a snake like vine wrapped itself around his ankles and pulled him off his feet and started dragging him towards what I would assume to be a slow digesting death sack. He remembers that he's got a fishing knife on him because what coastman off of Ormaine doesn't. He remembers he has a fishing knife on him, pulls it out and slices through the coil, which.
Kind of fades away and falls off of him. He stands up startled and keeping his eye constantly on his recent attacker. This plant starts running off back to his boat, rolls away from the aisle. Like one of those cartoon characters, that rose so fast. It just looks like a constant circle. Yeah. I bet the boat wasn't even touching the water anyway.
So he gets back to or, but the [00:21:00] guilt of leaving the madame's corpse and Roland too, got the best of them. So that coupled with maybe some treasure lust. Has Sam tapping 20 local sailors to join him in returning to Mystery Island. They get there all well and good, but discover no sign of Madame nor her big lovable horse dog.
Only a seemingly more dilapidated house in which wild animals are now shacking up. There's a very vivid description of a rabbit with a new nest of brood, I guess. Like squirming around suckling rabbit nipples. Moving,
Ryan: moving
Damien: on. Damien's getting a bit stuck here. Just rabbit nipples. They all think that Sam's nuts at this point where he's describing this old woman and the dog used to be there.
So he asks everyone to wait a hot minute and runs off to find the devil weed and possibly the treasure. Only now the. Damned plant has grown in size and ferocity yanking out rival trees, shrubs, and bushes anywhere around it. As it essentially entangles [00:22:00] itself within the entire island. I mean, this thing is huge at this stage.
Now we know how the rumors of the sea serpents come to be. They were actually the deeply embedded and highly violent vines of this devil weed, possibly the roots too, that had permeated through the island and jutted out into the water surrounding, which by the way. This plant, sensing Sam's return, launched into a massive Array of like from the ground projectiles up into the air.
All the roots go shooting up into the air, uh, into the sky. Yeah. And they create this not only a tumultuous shock, but also this like violent, like tempestuous wind flurry. So Sam is lifted from the ground in this wind storm. And upon seeing a rat's nest of what he believes are human bones in the plant's core, grabs a tree to stabilize himself, pulls himself back to the ground and runs back to the men.
Their boat, and they all, gee, the F O. [00:23:00] So, the tale ends with reports of many ships going under that day, the ferocious storm just too much to bear. And those out of the know blame a freak weather anomaly, but Sam knows what's up. It's the devil weed having absorbed, maybe, or rejoined, likely, the vengeful spirit of Grand Madame, and it had wreaked its most spiteful havoc yet.
And it's only going to get worse from there. End of story. Well done,
Ryan: Damien. Perfect. So based on not only your excellent summary there, but also some pre show conversation that we had, I want to, rearrange some things here and start in a slightly different place than I originally intended. Let's look at this ending.
Um, for a while, this. Is a haunted island story and it just creeps merrily along and then boom It takes a hard turn almost towards the cosmic there at the end. What is going on here? Is this more than a cursed treasure story? Does this give you cosmic horror vibes? What do you make of the ending?
Jessica: [00:24:00] So most of the story reads like and I feel like I sometimes use this like negatively, like the boy's life adventure story where it's just like pulpy fun. And then all of a sudden it gets big. It turns into a big story about a big plant. And it seems like, in a movie, it's the twist where.
Aliens are touching down or whatever, which is I was anticipating based on the other stories in this collection that the vines would squirm after him,
Ryan: right? I mean, he'd get his treasure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Like any narrowly escapes a vine taken a chomp out of him or whatever.
And then instead you get this.
Damien: This devourer of world shows up. I mean, I dig that. I like the angle that it took because it suddenly became larger than life. It suddenly took, like you said, that hard left turn and took what could have been a what's with the woman. What's what does she symbolize?
Is she old? Like lost. This was very lost. And I'm not going to get [00:25:00] into any more Lindelof hate. So y'all can sit tight with that. But I will say that it just went from, okay, where are we going to finish this to, oh, this giant carnivorous plant. And we knew this going in, right? Because it's evil roots.
It's not, ghostly lovable horse dogs or old women, dying on the vine. Yeah. It's evil roots. And so we were able to decode exactly where this was going. I was thrilled with it. Yeah. Just the amount of grandeur. I instantly knowing that this is tales of the weird series.
I instantly went into that cosmic horror vein. I thought this all of a sudden took a Lovecraftian turn in this all of a sudden, turn a mock and took a mock and turn, and it became this larger than life, all encompassing and all encompassing. Only getting bigger, like nothing could stop it. It's reckless, like
Ryan: vision from this other world.
Right. All of a sudden there. Yeah, right. It was super, super cool. And I thought, Hey,
Damien: you got to go out big. I wish there would have been more like victims. I hate to say it, but it was a little saccharine that everyone got away. Okay. It
Ryan: said many, many. [00:26:00] Many ships sunk that day, so there's, yeah, but
Damien: we, yeah, we couldn't,
Ryan: we didn't, you didn't get the gruesome details.
Totally collateral. Yeah,
Jessica: yeah, we wanted someone to get their head popped off by a vine. I
Ryan: needed a head. This is an ending that really woke me up. You know how you're like reading along and you're like, uh huh, wait, sorry, let me go back a paragraph. What's this?
Yeah, exactly. Like, it really perked me up in my chair, like, oh I ended up loving it. I thought the cosmicness of the end was fantastic. Of course you guys know that's my jam. Right. And I loved the fact that all the MacGuffins of the story were just totally abandoned.
Don't need them. Open, eat, dog, treasure. Does not matter. Doesn't matter.
Damien: What happened? I don't know. Paint your own ending for them. All I got is this, Giant world encompassing devil weed, right?
Ryan: When people say you should stay away from there, you should stay away from there because, maybe it's poison Ivy, but maybe it's also as a thought, we don't know.
Potato, potato. Well, in Daisy's intro, she compares a story to William Hope Hodgson's work. And [00:27:00] we've read. At least several stories of Hope Hodgson's on this podcast, and if not more on your own. What do you think about the comparison? Where do you see those two intersecting? I mean, cause of the forestry?
Jessica: I think cause of the boats. Right? You think
Ryan: the boats, yeah?
Jessica: Yeah, I think just there's a boat in this story, and a boat in Hope Hodgson's. Hodge, all of Hodgson's stories, um, that's, was my assumption anyway, that it starts off as a little nautical tale. We get, yeah,
Ryan: definitely get that. But I also think it's in the sense of Hope Hodgson, we've read a couple of stories, I think all the way back to season one, when we read the mystery of the waterlogged ship.
Right. That was just yeah, it was a story that ended in a way that colluded your assumptions from the beginning. Totally. And maybe that's what she's getting at, that it completely changes your expectations.
Damien: That's fair.
Jessica: I think this one also started out with dialogue that, I mean, I guess makes sense that was similar to season one where it's [00:28:00] old ship guys talking about Devildorgs.
Yeah, Hodgson does that a
Ryan: lot, exactly. Devildorgs
Jessica: and whatever else is on the highway. It's
Ryan: been a while since we've had to, we've had to do some vocabulary hunts. Like we really had to do that in season one.
Jessica: Yes, yeah. All the
Ryan: nautical terms and. Yeah.
Damien: I mean, we didn't get a ton of that in this though.
And if you didn't know what a Dory was, I guess that's up to you. I thought there was a lot of like purple pros in this, but it also blended a little action packed this. So it was fun. Like I, I didn't sit there and get swelled up in 20 pages describing the corner of a room, right? It was pretty fun.
It was a little bit on the policy side, right? Exactly. but it's still like it, it amplified the horrific elements and made everything that was gushy or squishy or old and decayed even more so.
Ryan: Well, and the plant in this one's pretty different from what we've read so far, I think. A little.
Did you disagree? You don't think so? You think it's the same?
Damien: I mean, vindictive plants, the orchid was a little bit of the same way. I think this one was more aggressive and more [00:29:00] direct. It wasn't like happenstance. You didn't get a sense that it needed to do this to thrive or survive. You saw it as like this vindictive demonic entity, um, that was just there to cause mass destruction and didn't really have a cause.
Whereas I think a lot of the other, a lot of the other stories, It was slower. It was patient and it was just doing things because it needed to, whether it was junk and that's what it did. Yeah. It just eats because it eats right. Or the orchid. It just like proliferates because it does. This one was no I'm here to raise hell.
Jessica: The way that the plant was described was also like a little bit. grosser than I think some of the other stories where it's writhing and squirming. And there's a lot of squirming in this story.
Damien: It was more serpentine. It even called it like scaly or it looked like it had like shiny, Like scales or something like that.
And it's tendrils. It was definitely a serpentine.
Ryan: I thought that it, the malevolence attached to it. I mean, the only thing that really compares to that is the plant that was [00:30:00] in the green death, the murder mystery closed room murder mystery story that we did. Yeah. Um, but even
Damien: then that was like a silent assassin and this one right.
Barbarian.
Ryan: No, this one. Yeah. This one definitely is more malevolent. There's a line on page one 16 that I thought was really good. I wanted to. Yeah. See if you guys enjoyed it as much as I did, probably not, but we'll try anyway. Um, it describes a plant. It says it is not a plant. It is my soul shrieking maledictions to heaven.
To heavens. Yeah. I mean, that's the curse. That's the curse. That's the curse. And that's really one of the first glimpses we get that this is going to. This is going to open up in a big way.
Damien: No, it's a good line because it actually gets mentioned again later in the story as he's like witnessing it for the first time.
He thinks back to a now dead grand madame. And that's the one thing that sticks in Sam's mind is that line. So it's pretty cool.
Ryan: I think Jess, you brought this up earlier. Let's talk a little bit about the theme of plant as guardian. We get that here. What is this plant guarding?
Is this an effective [00:31:00] theme? I'm surprised, I'm frankly I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this.
Jessica: Yeah, this seems very like pirate trope y. That we haven't come across. Treasure
Ryan: Island. Yeah,
Jessica: where you go through the quicksand and then you get to the jungle, to the vines. Right. And your treasure chest is in the middle of a plant that wants to eat you.
Damien: But, so, what is a garden? That's my, that's the big question. What is it? Is there really a treasure? Originally I thought, okay, is it some like eco warrior that's here just gardening, but it was described in the end as it grew and proliferated. It was tearing up rival vegetation left and right. It was like, it was just obliterating.
So it wasn't there to preserve the natural island. So was it guarding a treasure? Is there a treasure at the heart of it? It, I thought it was all that just a lie to keep you away from it. Exactly. Well, why would, I don't know. It's like you would think that if someone had a malicious intent to unveil and unleash the [00:32:00] the devil weed unto the world see I was getting in, in, in madame's ramblings.
I thought she was a witch. I thought she was a witch and I thought that she was working on behalf of the French monarchy. And I thought that she did they employ witches regularly? I don't remember that side hustle. It's like an Uber, not really full employee, but always available, right?
The
Ryan: French are very
Damien: well known for employing witches. No, but I really thought that was the case because it was hard. She was giving one. She's an unreliable narrator. Cause she's sitting here Completely spacing out waxing from an old archaic brain, right? But two it's very obvious that she's been there a while the dog's been there a while They completely disappear like there's just a lot of that supernatural like witchy magic element to it so I thought that she was given this as a curse unto the new world and So if that's the case, then I don't think it's an actual guardian then it's not a guardian.
It's then she's the
Jessica: guardian
Damien: She's the [00:33:00] guardian, right? And so which would work? And the
Jessica: dog, I guess were plural guardians, right?
Damien: This dog was a terrible guardian. This dog was like, would you please gimme a biscuit? Yeah. He's like, come here. I wanna show you. Was the guts of guardians that's Come here, check her out.
She's over here. . Let me show you to the shack.
Jessica: Come to my house. . Yeah. Not great guardians. But it, I've been there a while. Yeah. .
Ryan: He was tired. He was
Damien: tired of this job. He really was. Yeah, I would be too. He'd been there a while. He'd seen some things.
Jessica: That also, when she disappeared and we got back to the island, and the dog is gone.
My assumption was that he was going to have to stay there and now he's the guardian of the island And like that's why people didn't want to go out there or come back, but then he just speed boated away. So
Ryan: I'm a little surprised we haven't seen more of this theme of the plant guarding something I think we've danced around if not mentioned directly and listen, we could in every episode mention directly the ruins. [00:34:00] Yes. Yeah, sure. But I don't know why, like, Check your bingo cards.
We just mentioned the ruins again. That's the kind of story I guess I, when I look at this collection of this anthology, that's the kind of story I guess I thought I would see a lot more of and we haven't. So, and this story isn't even that in the end. So, I mean, I'm trying to say I really liked this story because it surprised me.
Jessica: Right. It was unlike the other stories in this collection. You obviously know there's going to be a weird plant just based on the collection, but I don't think you're thinking cosmic horror pirate treasure chest, nice dog.
Ryan: I love that combination. There should be more stories that are cosmic horror pirate treasure chest and nice dog combos.
Damien: Well, I will say this now that I'm thinking about maybe the plant was meant to be, if we're looking at the plan as a guardian or guardian ask, and the size and the level of like destruction and chaos, it could incur it was draconic, it gave real dragon vibes.
And so maybe that's the direction they were going with it, I would [00:35:00] anticipate that this would be standalone and how, I don't see a lot of people writing plants to be dragons, especially in the late 1800s. I think that's a pretty novel approach.
Ryan: It's the dragon garden, the treasure.
Yeah, that's a cool idea.
Damien: I mean, when it was small, it still had serpentine qualities, right? So you take that, you make it huge and bam, dragon plant.
Jessica: Bam.
Ryan: So, shifting directions a little bit then the character, the boy, is described as having, quote, marked three points ahead in the line of intellectual development, end quote.
We don't see this description too much today. My question is it necessary to the plot? What does it add? And in a modern story, how might a character of markedly lower intelligence be shown or used both well and badly? while respecting their dignity. Is that even important in fiction?
Jessica: I think you get the adventuring doofus who's ready for anything.
Like the kind of dumb jock. Like I don't think that Bill and
Damien: [00:36:00] Ted's excellent adventure.
Jessica: Yeah, like you just get I feel like you're going to get into more antics if you're not overthinking things. If you're just going to Make your boat over to the island that everyone says, Hey, don't go to this island.
And you think, yeah, okay, I'm going to go to this island. If you're a real worrier, you're probably not going to do
Damien: that. Or maybe you would, but you end up in that rat's nest of bones in the middle of the plant because you just don't have the savvy to escape it. And you just walk in blindly.
To me, this is It's the equivalent, are you going to have a really dumb protagonist? No, because they're not compelling and they can't probably move this story forward. So I think that was probably laid out so that it could explain a way why he would be so enticed to go solve this mystery and kind of dig through the.
The implausible and try and find the plausibility. And then he just gets broadsided by, Oh, there's this giant, aggressive world ending plant. Didn't see that one coming and I'm [00:37:00] smart, so I'm out.
Ryan: Well, both of you know that I like to read a lot of Robert E. Howard and. Two of my favorite Howard characters are Steve Costigan, the sailor, and Breckenridge Elkins, the doofus of the mountains.
I mean, and both of these guys are not bright characters. I mean, but aren't they clever? They're not even particularly clever. They're just they're some combination of charismatic and lucky.
Jessica: Yeah, that's fine. That's funny. Very funny.
Ryan: At the risk of sounding impolitic these stories are hilarious.
And yet if one were to be tried. If you were to try to sell one of these stories today to a magazine, they'd be like, are you kidding? No way we can't publish this. No,
Jessica: I think you could. Everyone loves a good himbo now. I was trying to look up who Cronk was, and then I ended up looking up Gronk, who's a different guy, but I think that Rob
Damien: Gronkowski, tied in for the I was trying to look
Jessica: up the Beefy sidekick from the Emperor's New Groove, who's Kronk, I
Damien: think.
[00:38:00] Voiced by Patrick Warburton, I do believe. Yeah, okay, let's think
Jessica: of any kind of Patrick Warburton esque guy. Who also voiced
Damien: the Tick, right? Who was another himbo. A himbo hero.
Jessica: Yeah, I think that still exists. What about Brendan
Ryan: Fraser in The Mummy? Does that count, or is he too clever?
Damien: No, Brendan Fraser in Encino Man.
Ryan: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Damien: I
Ryan: mean, you really left that low hanging fruit right on the branch there. Or how about this low hanging fruit, Damien? What about the two jocks and tremors?
Damien: Well, are they jocks or are we talking Kevin Bacon and his equally Fred rough and tumble? Yeah. Yeah. All right., I don't know if they were necessarily him bows. I think they were just like Western, rough and tumble types. I think they were pretty smart. They were, they actually had, I do believe it was Kevin Bacon that came up with the idea of throwing an explosive behind the final worm to send it through the cliff and over to its death.
So let's not back baby into a corner there. Okay. Thank you. Listen, I think those are fine movies.
Ryan: Both. [00:39:00] At least the first one.
Damien: You're tough.
Ryan: Jess, can we get a confirmation on your feelings about Tremors? I was just trying to
Jessica: think of other lovable himbos that would fit what we were talking about, and I was thinking about Ken from the Barbie movie, I feel is a real recent example of a himbo who goes on some adventures just because he doesn't understand what's going on.
But
Damien: himbo ironically, it's still Greta Gerwig. So
Ryan: I concur with that. And I don't mean to be that guy, but I'm going to be, you didn't answer the question about Tremors.
Damien: Back to what's important, Jess.
Jessica: Yes.
Damien: Excellent response. Thorough. We have a full fist of whiskey for all of us on Tremors 1 through 17. Tremors in space.
Jessica: Yeah, I like the later ones where they turn into little guys. That's fun. There's
Damien: a variety of Tremors. The tremor universe.
Really? Tremor. Tremor writes. Yeah. Yeah. The little
Jessica: guys are fun
Damien: tremor. Enos
Ryan: [00:40:00] Let's take it back to the story. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the writing. This might be the only thing the Good Doctor wrote. So,
Damien: how did it do? Right. Loved it.
Jessica: Great!
Damien: I mean, definitely flexing some intellectualism there, but not so much where it felt dry or too stoic. It was still fluid.
It told a good story and it was just like ultra effective. I give him high marks on the writing style.
Ryan: I thought it was excellently written and it was hard to tell whether, If this was the only thing he got published or whether this was the only thing he wrote, I mean, if this is the only thing he wrote and it gets published immediately and.
That's it? He calls it a day? Good, good on him, but I'd like to read the ones that maybe didn't sell because I bet they're probably pretty good, too.
Jessica: It's also possible that this was an established author who just submitted one story. He doesn't normally write Cthulhu, plant, monster islands. He
Ryan: should.
Yeah.
Jessica: But should, yes, should have written more of these, yeah.
Ryan: Here's a quote I really [00:41:00] liked. This is on page 107. Here. Amidst a medley of decayed stumps and underbrush, he saw a rude, bored hut, before which, with his nose in the air, sat the dog, who had led him to question and investigation. Far from being the formidable creature of the fisherman's yarn, this noble wreck of the mastiff breed was ill fitted to hold midnight revels.
And to conjure with infernal powers, since every fiber of his poor old body called for blanket and kennel. I mean, Damon you summarize that perfectly earlier, but. I just love that. That was one of the moments in the story where I put the book down and clapped a little bit. Right. So I'm like, yes, I instantly
Damien: love this dog.
Ryan: Yes. I love this dog. It is not a terror of the night. He's like, you've heard
Damien: about me, huh? Woof. He probably tooted [00:42:00] like on his way.
Ryan: But kudos to Nolcini because he builds up this expectation that you're going to meet, Cerberus, right? And then you get. I don't know, the dog version of Garfield or something like old yeller, early yeller, right?
It was really well done. Anything else about the writing that you particularly enjoyed?
Damien: I mean, I, again, I've said this a few times, but I think I liked the balance. It's not usually my style to find the more purple prose, which I think that this definitely carried that intellectualism and a little bit of poesy to it to where on first glance, you'd be like, Oh, it's one of these authors.
But it was really super effective. It was still tight in execution. There was a lot of flourish. He didn't waste a lot of like column inches and unnecessary detail. He went in on ultimately, which is a pretty like short story, right? It's a very short, it's not very long, but I also think that. It was lengthened appropriately, , where he focused a little [00:43:00] bit more attention and things like describing the ruin in which the, grand madame was found describing the Island, the lushness of it describing the plant ultimately and how it changed from the first encounter to the second encounter.
I think all of those were super effective utilization of like real tight attention to detail. And the rest of the story had quicker pace. So it was a nice balance. Yeah, it was.
Jessica: A really interesting way to write the kind of purplish, flourishy language. Where you were never confused about what's going on, like I associate that a lot with like, it takes three paragraphs for one character to go across the room because we're getting monologue, description, thoughts, history, and this was like, it took, like he could have just said, I got to the cabin and the smelly old dog was sitting there, but we got a really descriptive paragraph.
Yeah. Where you're just like, Oh, okay, cool. I get it. And I
Ryan: really appreciate how both of you highlighted that [00:44:00] and drilled down on that because I agree, but it's okay to have this purplish prose in a story. If you're not afraid to end the paragraph and move on. Right. I really appreciate that. Don't carry yourself away.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah, you can do this. You can describe something at length and thoroughly, and then you progress the story. I never once felt like this story got stuck, even though it had a lot of florid language.
Damien: I think Jess really touched on something I didn't think of, but now looking back on it, when you mentioned it, it makes a lot of sense.
There wasn't a ton of internalization. Like the exposition coming from grandma Dan was about an, and from Tom, the old salt in the beginning, right? That was it. Everything else that was experienced by Sam. We didn't get his back story or anything like that. It was just, he was going through and playing the game.
He's going to
Jessica: the Island and he's going back from the Island and he's. Going back to the island.
Damien: And that's probably, yeah, that's probably what we saved on is a lot of that unnecessary, like, you know, how much character can you build? Well, we
Jessica: didn't get his tragic backstory where one [00:45:00] time his mom died on a different island.
One time.
Damien: Exactly. The second time it was just a serious maiming of his stepmother. So nobody cared.
Ryan: Well, my last question, I'm curious to see if this is going to be controversial tonight. Did this story plant? Yeah.
Jessica: Yes, but I can see an argument for it not being a plant. Is that where you're going?
Ryan: I don't know.
Damien, how many plant, how many leaves are you giving this story? Five leaves. Out of ten? Full
Damien: stock. Ten leaves. Oh, ten leaves. Ten leaves out of ten. Eleven leaves. Here's why. It was like everything else was, you mentioned it, everything else was a MacGuffin, right? Everything else really, because we didn't care.
All we got is to this penultimate moment of experiencing this giant plant, which ended up causing such chaos that it sent a ripple of waves that sunk ships and Instilled heart fear in the hearts of men everywhere. And it was just like out of nowhere. So it started off being not necessarily planty other planty [00:46:00] innocuous plants, right?
The jungle on the Island, maybe a ghost, but then it ended with a big old plant sledgehammer. And so I give it a full 11 leaves. Fair enough.
Ryan: , I'm going to. Come in a little bit differently. I gave it five outta 10 leaves. That's fair. Because the cosmic of the ending overtook the power of the plant.
Okay. I don't know that it's the plant that caused all that. Well, that's not the way I took the ending. I thought, well, that's what I like, that the plant was just like somewhat innocuous at the end. Like the, yeah, there's this weird, gross, sticky, gooey plant. There's something else happening, like there's a black hole in the middle of this island, and that's what the plant was protecting.
Maybe. Damien's not sold. Jess, what about you? I'm not sold. Yeah,
Jessica: I, that's okay. I respect,
Damien: I just don't agree.
Jessica: When I'm picturing this plant, I thought at first, like a little flower with some vines. And then as it's getting bigger, it's looking like a big opening lotus flower. And then there's something in the middle [00:47:00] of this plant.
And that's what's causing all the, we've got vines, we've got wind, we've got whatever. So I think if we can consider the grafted moaning lily a plant, which is some weird, monstrous hybrid, I'm gonna consider this a plant.
Ryan: Okay. Well, how about the scare? Did the scare hold up
Damien: the immense mind? This is,
Ryan: This is sold to a magazine that does not publish
Damien: horror
Ryan: stories. The immensity
Damien: of the plant, the vastness of the plant, the, what would have happened in the next 10 pages is what to me was the scariest.
Ryan: Yes. Yes 100 percent with you on that one at least. For
Jessica: me, I thought The scare was gonna be that he was stuck on the island and he's the new old lady
Ryan: And so I thought like
Jessica: oh, that's gonna be scary.
I
Ryan: like that idea. Yeah, I like that idea actually. Yeah
Jessica: Right to bring it back. I'd say this is
Ryan: actually a pretty scary story I thought it was scary especially for the time it was written. Yeah, [00:48:00] I thought this was really progressive and so I think Nolcini snuck one in on Umstotter, uh, got a horror story in there actually.
The
Damien: old Nolcini Umstotter approach,
Ryan: I love it. We know that play. Well that's going to take us to our whiskey ratings then for this episode. Whiskey, whiskey rating, whiskey is what we drink. Whiskey ratings are how we rate our stories. All the way from zero fingers of whiskey to five fingers or the full fist of whiskey.
Jess, what are you giving? I was
Jessica: originally gonna do a four, but I bumped it up to a four and a half because I liked the old dog and I'm glad there was a nice little dog on this island and I think honestly my future might be me and Gus just growing old on an old island together. You're gonna be, you're
Ryan: gonna be the guardian?
Are you gonna be the guardians?
Jessica: I think that this could be my future. So if anyone has a lead on a slightly haunted island or something that needs, there's always
Ryan: islands for sale down here in Florida. Well, you don't have any money, [00:49:00] so
Jessica: someone will have to buy it or send me there. I
Ryan: think you can just, I think like you can just camp on it for X number of days and then it's yours.
Jessica: Squatters, right? So
Damien: pretty much try lifting me from an island government.
Jessica: I'm looking at this story aspirationally, I guess. So four and a half.
Damien: Damien? I definitely had a four and a half. I'm really tough , on the five finger stories, but this is probably as close as it gets because it hit all the notes for me.
It was the right length. It told a tight story. It was wild. It was weird. It was a weird tale. It was a tale of the weird. The only thing, what made it great is also what prevents that last half star was there wasn't a ton of development of character, right? And I know we all love the dog and I liked that.
The broken sailor who said a bunch of stuff, I think, but I just couldn't quite decode it. And I read it a number of times. Yep. Um, he called it like a Dermond Derg or whatever. And he was like, you're like, what is it? What are you, the Swedish chef? What are you saying here? [00:50:00] Dermond Derg. But yeah I just, it hit a lot of notes, but then it did have too many MacGuffins.
It had too many red herrings and it didn't wrap anything up, but it ended with a big bold sweep and I love that. It was just a really fun read for me. So four and a half easy. I am shocked at both of you, frankly, that
Ryan: You gave it a five. No, I'm lower than both of you. I'm coming in at a four.
I can't believe, I can't believe this. I can't believe this, but this is interesting, right? I loved this story. I really enjoyed it. It was scary. It was great writing. It was an unusual and very original story, at least original for the time and original for the kinds of stories we've read in the Tales of the Weird so far.
I was captivated by the writing. Here's where I dinged it. I dinged it at the very end. I liked the climax of the story, but at the very end, we haven't talked about this. There is a list of questions that was such an unsatisfying conclusion to me. It broke the fourth wall [00:51:00] totally for me, took me out of it.
And I just wanted to take a pen and scratch out the whole last paragraph. I was so mad. Enough to drop an entire finger? Enough to drop a whole finger. That's a valuable finger.
Damien: Especially if you're going to Campbeltown. I
Ryan: don't
Yeah, I'm four fingers, four fingers of whiskey. So I think it's safe to say we all enjoyed this story, but I am pleasantly surprised. See, it was so horrible. You blocked that. We will forget this. We will forget you spoke.
Thank you.
Damien: But that's all right. We brought it up to a four and a half. We brought it up to a four and a half. Yeah.
Ryan: No, I'm happy to go with the majority rules here. So if you liked this story, as we did, then here's one you might also like. And this story does not connect thematically as much as it does structurally.
And that is the novel American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett. Robert Jackson Bennett is an incredible writer that you should know. He writes across multiple [00:52:00] genres, and if you are a writer yourself, the thing that annoys you about Robert Jackson Bennett is his first foray into publishing in your genre, he will win whatever the top award is for your genre that year.
It has happened four or five times already. It is, I'm sure it is very frustrating to people, but American Elsewhere is a science fiction story and he won the science fiction award for it.
Damien: Interestingly, won the Shirley Jackson Award in 2013. There it is. I knew it won some award. Yeah. It was there. Yeah.
Ryan: So this novel starts off. Fairly normally, it's about a woman who inherits a piece of property in a town that she can't find on a map and through some investigation and some dialogue with folks. She finds where the town is in New Mexico. She goes there. It's a pretty normal town. And as the novel progresses, as she investigates, like why she's inherited this home and what it's going to mean to sell it and all these things.
It. The weird starts to [00:53:00] slowly ramp up. There's a scene in this novel that takes place in a tea shop. That is one of the most unforgettable scenes I've read in science fiction literature. It's terrific. You wouldn't think so going into it. Um, but the reason I'm suggesting this novel for this story is because by the time you get to the end of American Elsewhere, if you liked the ending of our story
That sort of all encompassing cosmic, like WTF, what is going on here? Black hole in the middle of this Island, you are going to love the ending of American elsewhere.
It takes it up to an 11 and that's by Robert Jackson, Ben or a four. Or a four and a half. Or a four and a half. Yeah. Highly recommended. I recommend Robert Jackson Bennett as an author, period. But particularly tonight, his novel American Elsewhere.
Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight here on Whiskey and the Weird. We are delighted to spend this hour with you and we hope that you are delighted to spend it with us. If you are, send us a little bit of a digital hug and give [00:54:00] us a rate or a review wherever you catch your podcasts.
We always want to thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird. And Damien, if they want to tell us where their mystery island is, where could they do that?
Damien: Well, that's a very personal question, but you can find us on the socials at whiskey weird pod on Twitter X at whiskey weird pod on Twitter X.
We're also on Facebook, Instagram, and threads. Let's get threads going. Huh?
Damien: At whiskey and the weird at whiskey and the weird on Facebook threads and Insta. We spell our whiskeys with an E and we hope you do too. If not, I'm going to send you a cute dog because you could use a little joy in your life. You crank.
Ryan: Jessica since we don't have another Nolchini story to read, what do we read next?
Jessica: Let's go with The Ash Tree by M. R. James.
Ryan: Oh gosh, I am already excited. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica [00:55:00] Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together, we're Whiskey and the Weird. Somebody send us home.
Jessica: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Bye bye, everybody.
Jessica: I thought it was freaks. I was like, that's not right. Keep your freaks in the pages?
Ryan: Please tell me that's still recording. Still recording.