Editor interview, y'all! Dinos and nuclear weapons, a Scotsman who only drinks tea, what it took to get a living author's story in the mix, and sci-fi just fantasy with explainable magic? Eh, sure why not. Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pondering what could have been with our ninth book in the vast collection, Roads of Destiny: And Other Tales of Alternative Histories and Parallel Realms. In this episode, we interview the volume's editor, Alasdair Richmond!
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Alasdair is reading Joe Hill's Basket Full of Heads graphic novel series; drinking Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold tea.
Jessica is reading Foe by Iain Reid; drinking Cooperstown Doubleday Baseball Bourbon.
Damien is watching Dust Bunny (2026; dir. Bryan Fuller); drinking Glenmorangie 12.
Ryan is reading Music of the Mouldering/If It Bleeds by Matthew M. Bartlett; drinking Bruichladdich "Laddie" Classic.
Up next: Season 10 is right around the corner! Follow @whiskeyandtheweird to stay up on what volume we're covering.
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
Alasdair: [00:00:00] I don't know how I got here. I don't know how I get back." Mm-hmm. "It's like a dream, but it won't leave me." And I thought, "Well, this is not unlike the a lot of stories of, people who become adrift in time or, are haunted by some past indiscretion."
And I think when it starts turning into horror territory is when the counterfactual history becomes not a theoretical exercise or a fiction, but a living, concrete, tangible, breathing place that either reaches out to you or you stumble into.
Ryan: Welcome back, everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damian Smith.
Ryan: And together, we're Whiskey and the Weird, the podcast that for the past eight seasons has been bringing you unrivaled literary critiques of the best of yesteryear's weird fiction, as collected in the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.[00:01:00]
Each season, we have journeyed together through one edition of this now voluminous series, and each episode, we've turned to one story for in-depth discussion, but never along the table of contents' prescribed path. If you don't want the stories spoiled, make sure you take the road less traveled and read ahead.
Alternatively, our summaries will do the job for you.
Damien: Never get those wrong.
Ryan: This season, we were fated to pluck the strings of the multiverse as we take a dimensional left at the corner of reality to trek through Roads of Destiny, and other tales of alternative histories and parallel realms, edited by Alasdair Richmond Look there, though.
Through the fog, is that, is that Alasdair Richmond himself? Is it? Here on Whiskey and the [00:02:00] Weird? Five. I don't even need Jessa's help for this one, friends, because today we are very excited to bring you- ... our Season 9 editor interview episode with Alasdair Richmond himself. Alasdair, welcome to Whiskey and the Weird.
Alasdair: thank you. It's very nice to, it's very nice to be here. , I can't possibly live up to that introduction you all
Jess: did. I
Alasdair: don't think, I don't think anyone living can, but I, I will do my best. Thank you very much for those, uh, for those intro words.
Ryan: We are, we are absolutely delighted to have you here, and typically we, we talk a little bit about our authors, and I just wanna s- read a bit from Alasdair's biography on, on his university's website.
Alasdair is a threefold graduate of Aberdeen University, and joined philosophy at Edinburgh in September of '03. He's published on myriad topics, including constructive empiricism, the anthropic principle, doomsday arguments, Descartes' [00:03:00] conception of immortality, time travel, and the topology of time. He's listed as a faculty member in the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences.
However, as I read through his list of publications, this is just a thin academic veneer over his true interest, which appears to be time travel. Yeah. Alasdair, is that, is that where they stick time travelogists in philosophy?
Alasdair: Well, we, we are a small, we are a small band. I mean, there's not that many of us.
It's not like people say, "We re- we really need more time travel around here. Get, get, get a time travel guy in here." It just, it's just how it ended up. I mean, I, I did my PhD about the philosophy of science, and I, I came to be more and more interested in what physics was saying about time,
and I thought, well, if you take this stuff seriously, then you're looking down the wrong end of something very like time travel, being at least not, if not possible, then a lot closer to possible than we might think. [00:04:00] And how do we deal with that? And that's how I ended up doing what I do. So yes, a lot of my research and a lot of my teaching is time travel.
Damien: Well, it was, it, it was either that or to don the head of Angus the Bull, I believe.
Alasdair: Well, that is, that is so often The menu option to the right hand Yeah Battle, time travel
Damien: Bend space and
Alasdair: time- Pick a side ...
Damien: and be a mascot. Bend space and time, be a mascot.
Alasdair: Right. It's one or the other. Yep. Yep. Afraid to, so I opted for time travel, and here I am.
Ryan: And, and, and we're, we're grateful for that.
Thank you for that. Uh, before we get too far into this, we do have a little bit of bar talk to do. Jessica, what are you drinking today?
Jess: so the last few episodes I have gotten several comments from our co-hosts about my beer drinking instead of whiskey drinking, and so I decided to splurge on the dumbest whiskey I could find, because I like a novelty bottle.
Ryan: I can't wait to hear this.
Jess: This is of course the Cooperstown Doubles Day Baseball Bourbon. Oh my God. And it of course comes in a baseball [00:05:00] shaped bottle.
Damien: No, it doesn't.
Jess: Yes, it does. It's amazing.
Damien: I'm out.
Ryan: So Alastair, you have to understand that Jessica's liquor shelf is got very short- ... height requirements.
Damien: So she can't- So she can't get tall bottles. Yes ... it mandates what she buys.
Jess: So we buy a lot of West Coast and New York whiskeys because they tend to be in squatty bottles. Oh my God. And you know what? This whiskey's very fine, but the bottle is much funnier and I'm gonna use it as a decanter and just decant everything out of this very- Perfect
stupid baseball.
Damien: Leave half of- Love it ... the terrible whiskey in the bottle itself, please
Jess: And then I read a book recently that I really liked by Ian Reid, who I know Damian also likes. Yes. I read Foe- Ooh ... which is sort of a- Cool. That's a good
Damien: one ...
Jess: eerie, mid-apocalyptic thriller where you mostly don't know what's happening, like the entire novel, and you're just along for the ride, but the ride is, is fun and creepy.
And it is also- Great ... a 2023 movie, which I just watched, and it has Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan in [00:06:00] it. Oh. And the movie is also pretty good, but they make the actors have American accents.
Alasdair: Oh, poor.
Jess: For, I would say two actors who are perhaps best well known for not- ... their American accents. Especially
Damien: Saoirse Ronan, you'd think, you'd think that- Yes
they would capitalize on that.
Jess: So that was just a slightly distracting, like, directorial choice. Mm-hmm. Despite that, it's worth checking out. But you will the whole time being like, "I think they sound better normally." So anyway, Ryan, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, in honor of our guest although it's not unusual for me to have a Scottish whiskey.
But we do have a Scotsman here tonight, so I am drinking the Bruichladdich Classic, which is really nice- Classic ... unpeated Islay whiskey. It's got a pale gold straw color. It's got a, a really nice aroma to it that opens up with just a few drops of water.
Damien: Mm.
Ryan: Heavy on the barley. Again, no smoke, no peat in this whiskey.
I, I will say that based on other [00:07:00] unpeated Islay whiskeys I've had, like Bunnahabhain, this one's a little bit more boozy, a little bit more alcohol burny forward than the Bunnahabhain. I, I like the Bunnahabhain a little bit better. But Bruichladdich is a, is a great intro whiskey too, for someone who's just getting into whiskeys, and maybe has tried something like Glenlivet or Glenfiddich, and wants to try a different region, but isn't, isn't sure they wanna delve into the smoke bombs that Laphroaig or Lagavulin represent.
So, this is the, the classic laddie. They've got a number of other bottlings- ... including a bottle I'm very jealous of that my friend David just picked up
Jess: Oh, Dave
Ryan: Thanks, David Which is- Yeah. No, he didn't get it. We don't have to thank him. He didn't get it for me at all.
Jess: No, I wasn't thanking him. I was just acknowledging him.
I
Damien: just say whenever you mention another name- Yeah ... I just say thanks to that person.
Ryan: Well, so, yeah. And that was- So to
Damien: Jan, so thanks,
Ryan: Jan I know, I know our listeners can't, can't see, but this is a very beautiful teal-colored bottle. And, and he got one that's,
Damien: It's a spring break whiskey ...
Ryan: it's a spr- yeah.
His- Pineapple whiskey ... his is y- bright yellow. It would be the perfect bottle for Whiskey and the Weird. Yellows are, are a big color. It would be. [00:08:00] And it's, Bruichladdich whiskey that's aged in rye casks. All right. So it's the, it's the Rye Laddie, uh, as opposed to the classic Laddie. So, maybe I'll be lucky enough one day that, that he would share some with me, or that somebody-
from the UK would, would bring me a bottle the next time they come to the States. Hint, hint, Westaire.
Alasdair: Uh,
Ryan: so that's what I'm drinking.
Alasdair: That's what I'm
Ryan: drinking. Message received. I, I, I mentioned a couple of episodes ago that I'm going through a reread of all the George R.R. Martin novels, which are, which are big, big, big thick things.
And I have to take a break in between each one. So I, I've, I've read all the prehistory stuff, and now I've just finished the, a reread of the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. So I needed my break read. And so for my break read this time- ... I picked a collection of two short novellas by Matthew M.
Bartlett. They're, they're bound together in a single volume. They're called Music of the Mouldering: If It Bleeds. So it's the two titles just smooshed together. Both, both really fun, really short, really fast-paced [00:09:00] stories. Both gross in Matthew M. Bartlett's- Sure ... noted style. The first one has a little bit more of a standard narrative structure.
The second one follows the style of writing that Bartlett is known for, which are these short pericopees, these short snippets that, that form a mosaic, and then the mosaic comes together at the end to form a whole picture, but it's not quite a, a standard narrative style for If It Bleeds. But Music of the Moldering was a lot of fun, so check out Music of the Moldering and If It Bleeds by Matthew M.
Bartlett. Damien, how about you?
Damien: Or as it's collectively known, If the Music of the Moldering Bleeds.
Ryan: There you go.
Damien: Okay. What a palate cleanser choice there, Ryan. Kinda cracks me up where you're like, "I need a little break. I need a literary break. Let me dive into some super gore."
Jess: The weirdest- Yeah ... grossest stuff.
It's pretty,
Ryan: it's pretty gross.
Damien: All right. Good on ya. Well, thank you for asking. I too, honoring Alastair's roots have chosen a scotch whiskey tonight. It's a Highland whiskey. It's called The Original. It's the Glenmorangie 12. I see. Okay. I [00:10:00] guess taking that title from the Glenmorangie 10, but this one is just as sweet as its predecessor.
Mm-hmm. Little citrus to it, but no smoke, you know, no peat, no nothing like that. This is an easy-drinking one that I think I would recommend to any American who said, "I don't really like scotch whiskey." Mm-hmm. "So what could I have that's not that?" I would pour them this and then laugh in their face as they enjoy it.
It's pretty readily available. What? It's a scotch, you jerk.
Jess: Psych.
Damien: And so yeah, so it, it, this one felt right for our time of the day, which is just past 4:00. Yeah. I, I love
Ryan: how both you and I chose pretty easy-drinking whiskeys
Damien: for this day drinking session. The easy-drinking whiskeys. Yeah. For this day drinking session.
It's, uh, yours, yours definitely looks like a spring break bottle. Mine does not. Although it is, like, bright orange with cool blocky letters. Yeah. So it looks a little art deco. And as far as something that I've watched recently, well, I read a lot of good books, but I wanted to point out that Bryan Fuller released a movie last year called Dust Bunny starring Mads Mikkelsen Sigourney Weaver.
David Costabile's in it as well. [00:11:00] And I went in blind. I didn't know too much about it. Love Bryan Fuller's previous works, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies. He's got a really cool, creative vision. Hmm. Okay.
Jess: Okay. Okay.
Damien: And I was like, "All right. Okay. Show me what this is about." And as it turns out, it's about an orphan girl who is living with her host family, and one day when she escapes from her room and is meandering around her neighborhood she sees Mads Mikkelsen as an assassin on the job absolutely slaughtering a group of rivals.
I... Who knows? It's what he was paid- He's starting
Ryan: to get typecast, isn't he, as, as, like Mads the assassin?
Damien: Just a bit. Yeah, just a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so upon, you know, realizing that he's been seen, he's instructed by his handler, played by Sigourney Weaver, to go take care of any witnesses. Well, he meets this girl who tells him that she needs to get out of his, her house because the monster will eat you.
And then it becomes a movie around the complicated relationships that develop as Mads falls in love... Well, not really in love, but, like, the professional-style love with [00:12:00] with this girl and, like, sees himself as a caretaker and identifies with her and becomes friends with her, much to the chagrin of his handler and the rival group of assassin people that is now coming to kill him for killing them.
And while there's all this complexity, and then you're left to wonder, is this actual monster that this girl refers to real? And it is an absolute hoot. It's a visual joy. It's a lot of fun. I enjoyed the characterizations, and it absolutely reeks of Bryan Fuller's vision in that it's just these creative scenes, these wild, outlandish characters, these big, bad, bold, beautiful colors in all of his cinematography.
It was a joy. It was a joy to watch, and it was a real surprise. So that's Dust Bunny, directed by Bryan Fuller from 2025. Alistair, how are you, good sir? I'm very well. I'm going to ask you the question we've just asked ourselves, which is, what are you drinking tonight, and what can you share with regards to a recent piece of media that you've loved?
Alasdair: I feel terrible. We're hated. You finally get a [00:13:00] Scottish guy on the podcast, and he doesn't drink whiskey.
Cries of, cries of- That's the way it
Ryan: goes for us, right?
Alasdair: Cries of, "What kind of Scottish guy are you, Richard?" I, I don't... I mean, I do. I mean, I, I dabble in alcohol, but I'm not an expert. I'm, I'm not very good at it. What I, what I, what I have been drinking in large quantities is Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold English breakfast tea.
Oh, wow. A marvelous packet that has, like, has, like, a kind of cubic, cuboid map of Yorkshire landmarks on it. I have no idea where it's available. That's what I've been drinking.
Jess: Perfect.
Damien: Okay. How do you take your tea?
Alasdair: Very, very, very strongly infused, stewed. Sort of stand the spoon up, and if it stands upright in the pot, it's about ready.
Fantastic. Then it's done. That's a proper steeping.
Damien: Proper steeping. And, you
Alasdair: know, and milk, no sugar, properly steeped. Ideally Yorkshire, northern English at least, uh, [00:14:00] breakfast tea any time of the day, all times of the day. Right. Perfect. I'm sorry, it fits very badly with your choices, but I couldn't- No,
Jess: you're very
Alasdair: fine
I couldn't lie. I mean- I don't know, I
Damien: put a little milk into my Glenmorangie and it's n- it's... You're right, it's not good.
Alasdair: Media. Comics. Can I, can I, can I recommend a comic? Oh, yeah.
Damien: Of
Jess: course. Yeah.
Alasdair: It's a dark one. It, it is, it's not too far away from the weird, but I, I have been greatly enjoying Joe Hill's DC Comic series, Basket Full of Heads.
Damien: Aha. Excellent. Great.
Alasdair: Which is... It's, it's, it's, the premise, I mean, it says it on the back cover. Yeah. So this is not spoiling it. It's, it's, it's a very well-articulated '80s-set crime drama, is the first thing. Right. Partly investigation, partly revenge. But the, the supernatural element which gives it its title is that the protagonist comes by a magic Viking ax which has- Aha.
Yes ...
Ryan: I see where this is going ...
Alasdair: which has the striking property [00:15:00] that the victim of decapitation remains conscious. Ooh. That's the thing, you see. You behead the victim, the victim doesn't die, or at least they don't cease to be conscious.
Jess: Huh.
Alasdair: And that, that, that I thought was, was, was a very succinct piece of nightmare fodder.
Yeah. I mean, it is the stuff of nightmares. I should say. I mean, literally, I can, I can, I can speak to this on my own. And it's, it's, it's great. I mean, it, it is, as you'd imagine, it is somewhat messy. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's very messy, and quite a few people, I, again, I'm not spoiling anything, quite a few people get the treatment in the course of the, of the, of the comic.
What, what
Ryan: kind of a comic about a Viking ax would it be if, if
Alasdair: they didn't get- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't, I mean, you can't introduce this device and then just leave it on the wall. Right. Sure.
Jess: Right.
Alasdair: Chekhov's ax. And people look at it. Chekhov's, Chekhov's ax. And, and it's, it's, it's great fun and really very, very grim.
And, uh, and I loved it. Joe Hill's- That's great ... Basket Full of Heads from DC Comics.
Ryan: That's a great recommendation [00:16:00]
Alasdair: Anyway, just, I just thought I'd say that out there
Ryan: Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, let's get into this interview. Uh, so A- Alistair, are, are you generally into weird fiction of the past, contemporary weird fiction, or is this something you picked up, you know, for this, for this book that you edited?
Alasdair: It's, it's been an interest of mine for a very long time. I cut my teeth as a small boy on St. Andrew's library copies of Helen Hoak anthologies- Okay ... if you know Helen Hoak.
Ryan: I do not. But that sounds
Alasdair: interesting Um, eery, eerie, weird, and wicked, monsters, monsters, monsters, witches, witches, witches. I mean, just brilliant.
And I think a little, I think I was a little young. They weren't quite age appropriate for my nine-year-old self, which made it all the better.
Ryan: That's, that's the best, yeah.
Alasdair: I was scared absolutely witless by stories in Helen Hoak anthologies, like The Waiting Men or Elizabeth Walter's [00:17:00] The Tibetan Box, which still scares me witless.
I've read it four times and it's arm's length every single time. Because there's a bit involving an ax and a, and a, and a box, which is, which is proper nightmare fodder. So I've been a fan of the, the strange story for a long time, and I, you know, began to assemble some ideas about it. And I saw the Tales of the Weird series.
The first one I saw was From the Depths- Okay ... another Strange Tales of the se- the, the Mike Ashley, which was one of the inaugural volumes of the series. It
Damien: was the inaugural season of Whiskey and the Weird. It was the inaugural season. Season one. Very loved. From the Depths, we think about it fondly.
Alasdair: It's very good.
It's, I mean, I mean all of the Mike Ashley volumes in the series are very, very good. And I mean, I, I don't have the whole series because you have to draw your lines in the sand somewhere. Yeah,
Jess: yeah. Otherwise, you know. You wouldn't have anything else.
Alasdair: Yeah. And my rule with anthologies is it has to be, there has to be at [00:18:00] least 50% stuff that I don't have somewhere
Ryan: else.
Mm-hmm,
Jess: mm-hmm. Oh,
Alasdair: that's a smart rule. And that means that some very good anthologies are not on my shelves because they overlap. But the Mike Ashley ones are almost always things that I don't have elsewhere.
Ryan: Yeah. He
Alasdair: was good picks.
Jess: And- Yeah, that
Alasdair: makes- He's very, very good. And, and so that, that, so that, it was an existing interest.
I was interested in ghost stories for a long time.
Ryan: One of your fellow editors from the British, British Library publication Johnny Mains, produced a volume of specifically Scottish strange stories. Have you seen that volume?
Alasdair: I have seen it. I don't, I don't own it, but I have seen it. I don't own it either.
Very- And it looked very good. I knew some of the items, quite a number of the items, and I thought that was a very good one. There was a not dissimilar, I think this was a Johnny Mains one as well, the Celtic Weird.
Ryan: Celtic one. Yeah. He did that too. Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Lots of, as far as I can tell, quite authentic bits of folklore are worked in, in, into that volume. Yeah, that's an excellent one. [00:19:00] So it's been an interest for a long time, and I followed the series with great interest. And I wrote to them on spec a few years ago, and I said, "Look, so you have this series, Tales of the Weird, which I read."
And I thought, you know, I have, you know, I had this idea for strange stories about alternative worlds, alternative realms,
which are worlds like this one, but different or divergent or spun in some way. And I thought to myself, "Well, well how, you know, how much of a list of these can I put together?" You know, because I liked, I mean, I liked the, the, the series typically ranges from early in the 19th century to late 20th or early- Mm-hmm
21st. And I thought, "Well, that's a very strong time for the strange story, the ghost story." You've got it emerging from the folktales- Mm-hmm ... with Sir Walter Scott, and you've got people like Amelia Edwards and M. R. James and Le [00:20:00] Fanu and all the, you know, all of these greats, Vernon Lee, and all these greats.
And I thought, "Well, without treading on the toes of too many obvious people," I thought, "Well, let's see what I can do by way of putting together a list of stories that I like, that are about transit, either transit between this world and a slightly skewed to similar world, or worlds that are set entire- stories that are set entirely in an alternative world that's a sort of a ironic commentary or strange parody of this one."
And I, I, I set myself some ground rules. I thought, "Right, they can't be stories that are set in heaven or hell or after- Mm. Okay ... or in between.
Jess: Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Alasdair: They can't be after worlds. They can't be, you know- Right ... you know, fairy. You know, they can't be the realms of the fae. They have to be worlds like ours, broadly similar, you know, in terms of, you know, sort of- Mm-hmm
you know, geography, biology, but [00:21:00] slightly skew. And so the first one I found, I have to be honest, I took this one from another anthology. Amelia Edwards-
Jess: I think everyone has done it in this series, yeah.
Alasdair: Bad poets imitate, mature poets steal. And
all that in between. You know, homage, homage. Um, I listed Amelia B. Edwards, The Discovery of the Treasure Isles. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. From a Richard Dalby anthology, and that was the earliest I could find. I won't spoil it too much, but a man goes on a, a search for treasure, and he, he, he finds a kind of archipelago in a world that doesn't quite match ours.
Geographically it's, it's slightly skew, and there are remnants of a civilization that doesn't seem to match anything that we know. And of course, he finds a lot of treasure, and it doesn't end well. That's not spoiling anything. It, it's- We,
Ryan: we, we already spoiled it for
Damien: you. Yeah, we, uh, yeah. And, uh, we also talked about the, how he- We like that one
just tends to drink anything he finds in a bottle as [00:22:00] well, which was a very interesting
Ryan: choice. Well, we, well, we discussed it, like when the pirate captain tells you exactly how to find the t- the- Mm-hmm ... the plentiful treasure, like this is not a good person to- Yes. Do, do not follow his
Damien: instructions ... to listen to.
Alasdair: No, no, no. If, if you're, you know, if you're daft enough to go, "Yeah, I'll, yeah, I'll do that." Yeah. You're in a, you're in a story, sir. You're in a story. No, no good will come of this. And of course, off he goes, and you're like, "Don't get in the, don't touch the jewel." Oh, he's touched it.
Jess: Everyone's trying to talk him out of it.
And he touched the jewel.
Alasdair: Yeah. He's touched the jewel. We know what happens. And it was, it was interesting that this is from about 1864, because images of worlds were not, you know, were not the be all end science fiction or fantasy or physics that they are now. And I thought it was very interesting.
Jess: Well, I'm gonna build off what you were talking about earlier when you were talking about the Amelia B.
Edwards story. Mm. Did you start the process by reading that Amelia B. Edwards story and being like, "I should build a collection around this"? Right. Or did you have the idea for the collection and [00:23:00] then launch off from there?
Alasdair: Mm. I got the idea for the collection first. Okay. And I got the idea for the collection on my third reading, I mention this in the book, of a novella by a guy called Sarban.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Who was a British strange fiction writer who produced a small but interesting body of work in early to mid-1950s. He wrote a story called The Sound of His Horn, which I first heard about in Kingsley Amis' survey of science fiction, New Maps of Hell. Mm. And The Sound of His Horn is often quite rightly classed as an alternate history story, because it's about a man who breaks out of a German prisoner of war camp in 1942, and wakes up in the Black Forest in the 21st century to find- Mm-hmm
it's, it's a hunting enclave in a, a victorious Third Reich, and he finds himself The object of a hunt. And of course, we know that it's an [00:24:00] alternative future.
Jess: Right.
Alasdair: And he doesn't.
Damien: Right. As
Alasdair: far as he's concerned, this is the future.
Damien: The future.
Alasdair: And he, you know, he, he, he basically sees what 100 years of Nazi insanity- Sure
have done to the Black Forest. And so basically the huntsman, uh, has specially bred hunting people, and there are specially bred objects of the hunt, and it's- Ugh ... it's, it's, it's- Boy ... it's extremely grim. And, and I thought to myself, "Well, this is, this is as much an uncanny story. This is about a man who's dislocated."
Ryan: Right.
Alasdair: Into a nightmare. I mean, it obviously has elements of alternate history. Thankfully, the world in it is- Right ... violent and virtual, I stress, and very nasty. But how
Damien: much?
Alasdair: Well, and, uh, and I thought, "Well, you know, this, you know, people rightly talk about this as kind of alternative history, but , there's a great deal of, the uncanny about this as well."
Mm-hmm. I mean- Right ... the confrontation with the central figure is like something out of Dracula or the Island of [00:25:00] Doctor Moreau. It draws very much on the kind of English language uncanny tradition as well. And I thought, "Well, you know, th- there are stories of alternative worlds, and even alternative histories whi- which are uncanny in their effect, where as in the sound of his horn or the discovery of the Treasure Isles, somebody moves from our version of reality to a reality which is in some way like but unlike."
And equally, there are stories that are set entirely in alternative histories where we are in possession of information that explains what's going on, that is lost on the inhabitants. I'm thinking of Stephen Vincent Benét's, uh, The Curfew Tolls.
Damien: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Where the central irony is that, that we know that the central character is Napoleon born too early.
Right, right. And his whole life makes sense if you realize this is a frustrated Napoleon. This is a Napoleon who doesn't have room to spread his wings.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: And so we [00:26:00] understand something about his continual frustration that, that is completely lost on him. And, and I, and I so, I began to kind of line up stories about uncanny transits between realities or uncanny or ironic alternative worlds.
And-
Damien: Did that start with Kirsch's An Undistinguished Boy, just with the fact of the Nazi tie over?
Alasdair: Actually the Kirsch one was one of the last ones that I wrote. Really? Hmm, interesting.
Damien: Oddly enough. Sort of came full circle then.
Alasdair: Yeah. I, I, I'd, I kind of agonized about not, I, I didn't want it to, to be too many Hitler victorious-
Jess: Yeah
Alasdair: stories. But there's a lot of those. There's a lot, there's a lot. There's so many. Oh my goodness, there's so many. Oh, yeah, of course. And, and, and I thought, well, you know, it, it's, it's a very, very
justly common alternative history, alternate history trope, you know- Right. Yeah ... alternative outcomes for the Second World War rightly command an awful lot of interest and, you know, [00:27:00] anxiety. And I thought, "I don't wanna have too many of them," but, but An Undistinguished Boy is about how to get ahead as a schoolboy in Hitler's Germany.
Right. It just happens to be. It, it... And the inversion of values, because, you know- Right
we're used to sort of stories about how somebody with pluck and initiative and daring, they overcome their disadvantages, and they get the prize, and they become head of school, and what you have to do in order to do that, and it has a very sour, uncanny sort of ending where... And, and I thought, "I have to have that one," because it must be...
I mean, I, I can't sadly verify this, but it must be one of the first counterfactual if Britain had fallen-
Damien: Mm. ...
Alasdair: strands.
Damien: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Alasdair: Because there were admonitory stories like Catherine Burdekin's Swastika Night written in the '30s about the war that's clearly impending, and what if Britain loses, and what if the Nazis win globally, and so on.[00:28:00]
But counterfactual ones, I, I mean, I can't swear that An Undistinguished Boy is the first one published in Britain post-war, but it must be among the very, very first. And I just wanted to give it a bit of an airing because of the- Okay. Mm-hmm ... as I say, the kind of, the way that it takes the tropes of being the plucky outsider, the
underdog- Right ... at school- Mm ... and learning to bounce back and be a good egg and play up and play the game- ... and how horrible that, that becomes. And Errol Kersh is an excellent writer of strange stories anyway, so. Yeah. Yeah, I, I just, I wanted one in there that spoke to that trope, you know?
Damien: It was one that stuck with all of us, I think, and was, I think, fairly universally appreciated in the collection
Ryan: Were there stories that you found that, that didn't make the final cut?
I mean, obviously there were, but- Mm ... what was the weeding out process like? How did you make the decision, "This one can't stay"?
Alasdair: Right. That, that, that- That's
Ryan: gotta be tough ...
Alasdair: that was the bit that actually took, took more time than anything [00:29:00] else. Me and my, me and my editor, I think I can mention his name, Johnny Davidson.
Damien: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Mm-hmm. Who works f- I, I, I think he may- I'll
Damien: tell you his name ...
Alasdair: mention his name. I th- I think he may do us other things for, for, for the British Library. But he was, he was a great sort of source of keeping it trimmed and keeping it focused, and he came up with the title. He called it Roads of Destiny.
Nice. After the O. Henry story. After the O. Henry
Ryan: story, yeah.
Alasdair: Yeah. I'd, I'd come up with a great raft of extremely boring titles, which I shan't- ... I shan't actually put on this podcast. And after a long correspondence, Johnny just said, "We could just call it Roads of Destiny."
Damien: Nice.
Alasdair: Yes. I said, "Yes, of course."
Perfect. And, and, and after we'd had, after we'd batted several suggestions back and forth, he said, "Yes." This is, this is why editing an anthology is difficult, you know? But one of the ones that I, I did agonize about was Henry James' "The Jolly Corner," [00:30:00] which is a story of a man who rents a property which turns out to be previously inhabited, and the previous tenant is a sort of alternative version of himself.
Oh. Interesting. That's the implication. An alternative version who seems to have lost two fingers in some unspecified conflict, and who literally represents a road not taken. Mm-hmm. You know, a path he could have taken is hanging around his house. And it's a splendid story, and it is, it is Henry James at the top of his considerable game, but it's quite long.
Ryan: A- as Henry James tends to be, right?
Alasdair: Late. And it is, it is late Henry James.
Ryan: Yeah.
Alasdair: It's the full Henry J- Yeah. He's- I mean, this is the full clause upon clause upon- No one's editing
Ryan: him.
Alasdair: It was a wonderful story, but it, we were getting, we were getting close to an acceptable size. One that I nearly took an extract, Keith Roberts, who's [00:31:00] mainly known for science fiction and fantasy, wrote a novella called pardon my pronunciation, "Winnacht at the Saule," which is about, again, this is an if Hitler had invaded Britain or occupied Britain.
It's about Christmas Eve in the Nazi dominated 1970s in Britain, and it owes quite a lot to Salmond's "The Sound of His Horn." There's a hunt, but the quarry is human. And the first half of the story builds up to this nightmarish sort of Errol Queen celebration of the Nazi idea of Christmas, and the second half kind of shifts into more Len Deighton sort of espionage territory.
And it's a brilliant story, absolutely brilliant story. But the two halves, only one of them I think properly belonged in the territory of the year. Ah,
Ryan: okay. Hmm.
Alasdair: And I couldn't just take the first half.
Ryan: Yeah.
Alasdair: So, so that was one that didn't make it.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Mm-hmm. Lisa Tuttle's "In the Arcade."
Ryan: She is fantastic.
Alasdair: Is a fantastic story about a kind of [00:32:00] animatronic recreation, I'm sorry, this is yet another if Hitler had won. Animatronic recreation of the civilizations that Nazism has expunged And it's very strange. I felt it was just on the cusp of being too science fictional to belong in Tales of the Weird. Sure.
Mm-hmm. Oh, interesting. But an excellent story, and one I wholeheartedly recommend. I should have included Ambrose Bierce's A Man with Two Lives. Hmm. Yeah. It's only, it, it's only short. It's about, it's about three pages. But it completely slipped my mind.
Ryan: That'll happen with so many to choose from, right? Yeah.
Alasdair: So those are ... I mean, I mean, Henry James, Keith Roberts, Lisa Tuttle, Ambrose Bierce are the ones
Ryan: that got away. Well, you heard it here first, friends. You can, you can look those up on your own and, and acquire them for your own libraries. And speaking- Of the ones, Alasdair, that did inc- that you did include in the story-
Alasdair: Hmm
Ryan: in the anthology, was there one that was a personal favorite of yours?
Alasdair: Well, I'm very fond of [00:33:00] Sarban's Kalmahine.
Ryan: Aha.
Alasdair: Just one that- Well, that, that
Ryan: one's also quite long. Yeah.
Alasdair: That is long. And I, I agonized, and agonized, and agonized. And, I mean, while I'm confessing, the Conan Doyle.
Ryan: Uh-huh.
Alasdair: I think that was a mistake.
Ryan: Okay.
Alasdair: I'll be honest. Yeah. I think that was a mistake. It isn't re- I, I ... When I read the finished product, when I read the whole anthology, I thought it isn't weird enough. It's not weird enough. And I still think it's not weird enough, I'll be honest. But with that small confession out of the way, I feel-
those who are listening on walkmans and flight planes- Thank you. We allow them.
Damien: Just give us two Hail Marys and call us in the morning, I guess. I mean, so you, you've already made some recommendations on some stories that, you know, hit the cutting room floor that should've been in here, but one of the things that we noticed, and as an avid fan of the podcast, I'm sure you know that-
we, we, we always include an if this, then that, where if you [00:34:00] like this story, why don't you read this other piece of, or watch, or en- encounter- Or watch some bad '80s movie ... consume this other piece of contemporary fiction- Yeah ... that follows the same themes, has the same arc. Sometimes it's a stretch. Hmm.
Sometimes it isn't.
Ryan: Hmm.
Damien: You were the first editor that we've seen in nine seasons who's actually included some recommendations- Uh-huh ... in your intros to the stories themselves.
Alasdair: Yeah.
Damien: Can you tell us why you decided to do that? Is it have to do with the parallel realms, like, approach? And, and what was that process like of deciding what to recommend?
Alasdair: Well, Damien, at this point I should say that it was a cunning riff on the idea of alternative realities, choices, and contingencies. Perfect, yes.
Damien: There we
Alasdair: go. I love it. I should say that it would be an utter- I knew it. We snipped right
Damien: through that, Alasdair.
Alasdair: We snipped through it ... it would be an utter, it would be an utter lie, Heather, but-
I did it, I did it frankly to get round the fact that I just couldn't get everything in I wanted. Right.
Ryan: Perfect, yes.
Alasdair: Exactly. Right, right. 100%. You know? I mean,
Damien: I knew
Alasdair: it.
Damien: And it, I
Alasdair: mean,
Damien: you know- With, with the number of stories that you had on the cutting room floor, I knew that was it.
Alasdair: I just ... I mean, I mean, to be honest, one of the things that, [00:35:00] one of the things that killed, I really thought long and hard about Terry Pratchett's 20 Pence with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting.
Which is a horror story about Christmas cards. Oh. Sounds
Ryan: very Terry
Alasdair: Pratchett, yeah. Being literally parallel worlds stacked up.
Damien: Ugh.
Alasdair: And the thing that stopped me including that was that I came across it in the same anthology where I found the discovery of the treasure islands.
Damien: Oh, gotcha. Mm. So you had to
Alasdair: pick.
And I thought, "I can't, I can't have two from the same anthology."
Damien: Right.
Ryan: Gotcha.
Alasdair: And so I thought, "Well, I've gotta have a nod to this." And there were quite a few, but I thought, "Yeah, you know." I mean, I couldn't resist a reference to Joseph Payne Brennan's Canan's, uh, Canavan's Backyard.
Damien: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Which is about a man who finds a kind of pocket universe in his backyard that turns out to be infinite.
Damien: Ah, we've all been there.
Alasdair: It's, it's, it's happens all the time down our way. I'm speaking to you, in fact, from a pocket of
Damien: the pocket universe. The, the Wi-Fi is [00:36:00] quite good, to be honest.
Alasdair: And, and, and I thought, "Well, I've gotta, I've gotta have a nod to Canavan's Backyard," and there was a G.B. Priestley I wanted a nod to, and I thought, "Look, just, just put some in an if you like this, why not try this bit?"
Damien: Perfect.
Ryan: I thought it was fun. I,
Alasdair: I, you know- By the way, you know ...
Ryan: I have so many anthol- old anthologies that, that I had probably half of them on my shelves then, and I, I- And it really
Damien: doubled the reading material, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause it was, it was great. It was like, "Okay, you love this? Then go check this out.
You didn't quite like this? Go see what this other one did and tell me which one you like better." To be honest, that was the subconscious message I got from every recommendation.
Jess: Yeah.
Alasdair: Well, that's, that's, that, you see, is the real story. You're, you're welcome. That one's free. Thank you.
Jess: This collection included some more modern stories- Mm
than we've covered in some of our other anthologies. Were there additional hurdles to including, like, a living author, either from the British Library or from the author?
Alasdair: If there were, that [00:37:00] went on above my head.
Jess: Oh, perfect. Great. Yeah. Hmm.
Alasdair: Interesting. I just, I just provided Johnny Davidson from the British Library, "Here is a list of stories I would like," and nary a word of complaint or remonstrance of said.
And he made it happen. Incredible. I now think the only living author we're left with, and may she live forever, is Joyce Carol Oates. Yes, she is.
Jess: Yeah.
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: She's, I think, the only author we've
Alasdair: covered- The only living author. Now, and, and I really, really wanted the Rosewater to get in. I, I thought that there's a, it's a perfect encapsulation of a child's nightmare, that you go out the door and you come home, and your family are no longer, they're no longer right.
They, they no
Damien: longer know you. Yeah. They're strangers, right?
Alasdair: They're strange... And it was a wonderful sort of, had this kind of wonderful sort of Kafka- old Vienna sort of vibe to it. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's not the longest story in the book, but it, I think it's one of the most atmospheric. It's beautiful. It's a great, and, and I didn't worry [00:38:00] about the negotiations with a living author because I, I didn't have anything to lose.
Yeah, perfect. I just really hoped, I just really hoped that we would be able to get that one. And
Damien: no, it turns out no bother at all. All right. How about that? J- JCO sent a cease and desist to us.
Jess: No.
Damien: Uh, so I hope you don't mind- No ... but we're gonna pass, and we're gonna go ahead and quote that on you. She
Jess: would never.
We're great friends.
Alasdair: I, I've, I've said I, I have, I have nothing, I have nothing but good words to say about Joyce Carol Oates.
Jess: Yeah, I hope she lives forever.
Alasdair: Genuinely.
Damien: No, that'd be, "I hope she lives forever." I think, I, I won- I wonder how many people would be like, "Is that a blessing or a curse at this stage?"
Alasdair: But- I meant it. I meant it as a, I mean, I didn't, I mean, I didn't mean it in a kind of Lady Eleanor Smith No Ships Pass
kind of way. Season one. Well, I mentioned, I mentioned Helen Hollick anthologies, uh- Mm-hmm ... Eerie, Weird, and Wicked. And it was through that, that at nine years old, I fell into Lady Eleanor Smith's No Ships Pass and was, I was profoundly shaken up by it.
Jess: No, that's a good story
Ryan: for
Jess: [00:39:00] a
Alasdair: nine-year-old. Fair enough.
Such a good story. And I've told the story to a couple of philosophy lecturers who specialize in death and the harm of death, and watching the color drain out of their faces. An absolute gift. Death is forgotten. There's no ships pass.
Damien: Right. I, I am curious that this, this concept, and you've already spoken a little bit about it when you said that you, you thought of this as, as a, as a theory, as a concept, as a unifying theme for a volume well before you, you started picking stories and you were like, "Let me pitch this to the British Library."
Mm-hmm. But the concept of a multiverse and alternate histories has, I think, had a bit of a renaissance in modern media- Mm ... thanks to some serious global properties like, you know, RIP Stan Lee, but you know, Marvel has really capitalized on that theory. Mm-hmm. But then there's also been some independent film, a lot of stories that kind of tap into that as well.
Right. We know why you like it, and if you wanna explain a little bit more about why you like it, but what makes this [00:40:00] concept of alternate histories and multiverses so compelling on a societal level and a globally societal level?
Alasdair: Well, that's very interesting. I mean, the, I, I mean, I did a, I did a, a bit of digging into the, the, the sort of history of the, of the genre.
And the first lengthy fictional extrapolations of counterfactuals tends to center around Napoleon I mentioned Louis Geoffroy's apocryphal Napoleon or Napoleon and the Conquest of the World, which is a, a, an extended two decades where Napoleon wins and just keeps winning and keeps winning and keeps winning- Yes
until he's won the entire world. And rather like Marlowe's Tamburlaine, he simply dies having won- ... length over everything. Congratulations. And Louis Geoffroy clearly thought this was great. This was, you know, it was clearly, it's an extended wish fulfillment You know, fantasy for it. And [00:41:00] alternative history has, has really not been wish-fulfilling for an awful lot of people.
I mean, you wind forward a century on, and two world wars, particularly the Second World War, have prompted an enormous raft of alternative histories which are in varying degree dystopian or nightmarish.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: And I think, I think that sense of, of not just the road not taken, but the road so very nearly taken to somewhere- And it, it
Ryan: was everybody's great anxiety, great- Right
their greatest fear. That's right. The worst thing that could have happened.
Alasdair: Yeah, that's right. Is it, it,
Ryan: yeah.
Alasdair: And, and, and it, it, it, it plays, I think, on a sense that, you know, there but for the grace of God, we could so easily have gone to- Mm-hmm ... name your own particular sort of hellish destination. Mm-hmm. Mm.
And that, I think, is, is, is on a global level, you know, times of, times of strife, times of warfare, times of uncertainty.
Damien: So
Alasdair: you do think about those things.
Damien: Would you say that it, it triggers those same, you know, hormonal centers in the [00:42:00] brain that traditional horror does, which is, like you said, what could have been?
Alasdair: Hmm.
Damien: When people think of what could have been, very rarely is it a, "It's probably a lot better than what it is now." It's, "Wow-" Yeah ... "this could have been disastrous." Mm. Yeah. "This could have been, you know-" Yeah ... "we could have been overrun by interdimensional creatures," or, uh- ... you know, in, in, in, in the famous scene from "The Simpsons" where donuts don't exist, but then it rains, and it's actually donuts that rain, that, that, that appear as rain.
Like, what, what, what is it, i- is, is it triggering those same sort of like fright response mechanisms in our brain, thinking of alternate histories just in general?
Alasdair: I think it, I think, I think when it starts getting close to horror is when you start thinking of, of, of a counterfactual history as a destination, as a concrete place.
Damien: Right.
Alasdair: Somewhere that you can visit, that you can stumble into or drift into, or that can come and visit you. You know, the way that Sarban's characters cross over in some rightly [00:43:00] unspecified, 'cause that's part of the uncertainty. "I don't know how I came to be here." Right. You know, "I'm in a world where the Black Forest is a vast hunting preserve for Nazis."
"I don't know how I got here. I don't know how I get back." Mm-hmm. "It's like a dream, but it won't leave me." And I thought, "Well, this is not unlike the unsettling feeling of a lot of sort of stories of, you know, people who become adrift in time or, you know, are haunted by some past indiscretion."
And I think when it starts turning into horror territory is when the counterfactual history becomes not a theoretical exercise or a fiction, but a living, concrete, tangible, breathing place that either reaches out to you or you stumble into. Something like the chap in John Metcalfe's The Barred Lands-
Ryan: Mm-hmm
Alasdair: which is probably in some ways the kind of signature story. It's not, as I said, my favorite story from the, uh, the collection, but in a, in a-
Damien: Mine [00:44:00] neither.
Alasdair: We can still be friends. I liked it. I, I do genu- I mean, obviously I like it. I wouldn't- I liked it ... I wouldn't have put it in the, in the anthology. But I like, I like the idea that this man's sense of isolation, this, this man's gradual growing mental disturbance tunes him in somewhere else Because the idea that maybe mental affliction does literally put you on a different plane.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Yeah. And there's another plane waiting for you to receive you where your disturbance, your terrors have objective presence in the sky and the land around you, and it's waiting for ... I, I, I found that, found that terribly unnerving. You know? I mean, maybe it's just having got lost on various beaches in Fife as a small boy.
Which are not uncanny and horrible in the way I just outlined, I stress. But that, it's, it's quite- M.R.
Ryan: James would, would differ.
Alasdair: Well, I did ... I would've, I would've loved to have been able to [00:45:00] contrive an M.R. James story into Roads of Destiny. But it would've taken a lot of contrivance-
Ryan: Yeah. And, uh, and I couldn't- I don't know which one would immediately jump to mind.
I mean- No ... he doesn't, he doesn't dabble in alternate universes. I mean, maybe Number 13 perhaps?
Alasdair: I did think about Number 13, but it is ... You see, I, I made it a rule, as I said, that the worlds would be parallel. They wouldn't be- Yeah ... as a what if. Mm-hmm. They wouldn't be hells. Mm-hmm. They wouldn't be heavens.
They wouldn't be fairyland. And I take it that Number 13 is a, is a room which is somehow coextensive with part of hell.
Ryan: Yeah.
Alasdair: Yeah. And it's a part of hell periodically brought to earth, or it ... I, I mean, it's somewhere hang of a, hang of an unprepossessing anyway. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, red flickering light and all.
And so I would've loved to have included Number 13, but I would've really have had to have gone against my own self-imposed rules. Right.
Ryan: Well, that's, that ... And, and as we've learned, you're a truthful sort of fellow if, if nothing else, right? So-
Alasdair: If nothing [00:46:00] else ...
Ryan: we, we, we've, we've, we've talked a couple of times here already about specific stories.
I wanna ask a, a question about a specific story, and that is that every season we have one story, or it ... U- usually it's not more than one actually where we really question why ... I mean, it may be a very fine story, but we, we really question why did this make it into this collection? How does, how does it fit the theme?
And I know what you said earlier about the Arthur Conan Doyle, because our seasons run only about 10 episodes per season, sometimes we have to cut, cut a couple of the stories out. So we didn't read the, the Arthur Conan Doyle story for the ep- for the Whiskey and the Weird season. So that's not it. Would you care to take a stab at, at which story we really questioned for this, for this season?
Alasdair: Pause us to, pause us to reach for an old copy of Roads of Destiny.
Jess: What stories are in here
Damien: again? We need a voiceover for this. He did not, in fact, have one in [00:47:00] mind.
Alasdair: I don't know. Scarofale?
Damien: No. Interesting. No,
Alasdair: it wasn't that. No? No. We liked
Ryan: that one.
Damien: No. And we, we, we did- I want Scarofale- I want to say we like the other one
we did discuss how Scarofale read more, we did discuss how Scarofale read more as a traditional fantasy story as opposed to- Yeah ... an alternate reality. Yeah. But w- that wasn't the one that we really questioned, so guess again. Oh, good guess. Okay. I'll
Alasdair: see
Ryan: you wonder
Alasdair: about Scarofale in a minute if you wait.
Um, brr, The Yellow Wallpaper?
Ryan: That's it. Yes. That's it.
Damien: Right. You got it. Right. All right. That's okay. So now, now the big question,
Ryan: we all had a great time with The Yellow Wallpaper, but we, we all did say- The Yellow Wallpaper is
Damien: arguably one of the greatest short stories of all time The gentlemen- The question is, why was it in this collection? Why
Jess: is it in this collection? The gentlemen- Why, why did it make this collection?
Yeah ... didn't think it needed to be in the collection. Right.
Damien: Right.
Jess: The gentlemen are wrong, I think. But- Okay. All right ... it should be in every collection- The, the- ... regardless of topic ...
Alasdair: funnily enough, I, I didn't question its suitability. I thought to myself, "Oh, so surely The World and her aromatherapist have got The Yellow Wallpaper."
You know? I mean, surely, you know, I mean, [00:48:00] it's been adapted, it's been commented upon. Mm-hmm. It is, it is- Right ... you know, it was one of Lovecraft's most-
Ryan: Mm-hmm ...
Alasdair: you know, clearly expressed examples of a good weird tale. And I thought, well, I wanted it in because of the suggestion that what comes through the wallpaper is a, a, a projected self, an alternative self.
Ryan: Aha.
Alasdair: That it, that, that it's not, that it's not a werewolf, you know? Right. It's not a- ... a vampire that comes through- Right ... the central character. It is, it is a version of her, a version which has been- Mm ... in some sense, unbounded or set free, and that, and that, that there may be a swap
Ryan: You know, that
Alasdair: the two selves may, may become interchangeable.
And that- That's really cool ... and that's why. So I thought it was about an alternative self that comes through. So
Ryan: we, we didn't, yeah, we didn't hit on that, and I love that suggestion. We, we spoke a lot about how it [00:49:00] was, uh, really this story about this woman going mad in this- Hmm ... terribly oppressive environment.
And, and we were, we were hard-pressed to say if we, if we can suggest that this is somehow a parallel realm or an alternative universe or a monster coming through the wallpaper, then it, then it diminishes her suffering in some way.
Alasdair: Right.
Ryan: And, and we, we weren't quite willing to do that, so that's why we questioned its, its purpose in the, in the anthology.
Alasdair: I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to stop anybody reading it in any of those ways. Right. I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wanna say that by including it in this particular collection means that I, I'm, you know, it's not to be read as an allegory of-
Jess: Right ...
Alasdair: medical control.
Damien: Right.
Alasdair: You know, hereby forbid people from seeing- That directions
Damien: them from creativity as well.
Yeah. So you don't want to, you don't wanna tell people exactly how they should interpret
Alasdair: the
Damien: story.
Alasdair: No. No, exact- And, and of course it, it's, you know, it, it is perfectly possible that nothing comes through the [00:50:00] wallpaper objectively. Mm-hmm. That if you had a camera trained on the wallpaper, you would see her scraping away at it.
Damien: Now, we've
Alasdair: seen art- Quite artistically ... we
Damien: get it.
Alasdair: Quite artistically by the sound of it. She goes to some lengths- Yeah ... on the wallpaper. But I don't think you're forced to exclude the possibility that, that, that, that, that she gets in touch with an alternative self through pain. Mm-hmm. Through, you know, through suffering, through being appallingly mistreated- Mm-hmm
and misdiagnosed and silenced. And it, it's, I mean, you can read it as something like Edith Wharton's Mr. Jones. Mm-hmm. Which is a, a, a ghastly story about a man who just grinds people and shuts them down and makes them silent, you know, mute, unresponsive. But there's nothing in Mr. Jones about an alternative self breaking through.
Mm-hmm. So I wouldn't- Right ... I wouldn't, I really wouldn't want to stop anyone seeing it as sort of psychological horror, medical horror, control horror And all those overtones because all of that surely [00:51:00] is there, or at least it's no violence to the text to read it that way. Right. Right. But I, I, I- I like that phrase,
Ryan: no violence to the text.
You were, you were gonna say something about Scarifell though. You, you said Scarifell. Oh, yes. I was gonna say something about Scarifell. Yeah. You see, the thing in
Alasdair: the end why Scarifell made the c- made the cut was the, that, that, that closing horrendous parody of the Lord's Prayer. Of the Lord's Prayer.
Mm-hmm. Right. The Lord's Prayer. The Lo- Yeah. That's what Damian said ... you know,
Ryan: the Lord's
Alasdair: Prayer- That was Damian's point. That was my point ... a Lord's Prayer from another world, a world which has, you know, stood on its head. Inverted.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: Validation. Yeah. Validation. Thank you, Alasdair. That's
Alasdair: one Scarifell.
Well, that was the bit, that was the bit where I got to the end of Scarifell the first time I read it, and that was the bit that sort of left me as well.
Damien: Yep. That's it. That's the one that stands out. That was a wonderful story, and he could have been a, a p- a potential still living author, but it, it looked like- Yeah.
Sadly, Robert- ... it looked like he passed away, like, about 15 years ago or so. So that's a shame. Yeah. Sadly, Robert
Alasdair: Holdstock left us, I think, in 2009. Yeah. And that was why Scarifell got in because- Mm-hmm ... of the sense of a, of a version[00:52:00]
of, of the Lord's Prayer which had leaked in from- Mm-hmm ... a sort of an ethically inverted world.
Damien: And Alasdair, I think that's the sole reason that that wasn't the story that we all said, "Why is this in the novel?" I think I've, or, "Why is this in the collection?" I think I, I was able to convince my co-hosts that it was because of the alternate- Because of the-
Lord's Prayer, that's what made the alternate reality.
Alasdair: Well, you're so right, Damian.
Jess: Oh my God, he needs to hear that more probably. Sweeter words have never
Ryan: entered his ears.
Damien: Yeah. You're so right, Damian. Please. Yes, that's gonna be the intro. End of podcast. That's gonna be the intro for this episode. You're so right, Damian.
Welcome
Ryan: to- Don't lie, Damian. That's gonna be the intro for every episode.
Jess: Yeah. Funny.
Alasdair: I mean, it's interesting because a lot of, a lot of these discussions are recapitulating, I must say, in a more articulate and amusing way, some of the- ... the kind of internal pinball I had. Good. I'm
Jess: sure,
Alasdair: yeah. This story, this story versus this story.
I mean, I have to mention another one that didn't make it. Um- Oh,
Ryan: please do ... [00:53:00]
Alasdair: Catherine M. Valente's Fade to White.
Ryan: She's a living author too, very much living.
Alasdair: She's a living author, and this is a- A story set in a world where a nuclear war breaks out in the 1950s, and it's about the kind of bunker culture.
And it just, it just seemed, it just seemed more science fictional than weird proper, but it's very str- it's beautifully strange, as Catherynne Valente's future worlds and alternative worlds are. It's, it's, it's a, it's a very densely thought out bunker world. It's a
1950s bunker world. Mm-hmm. It's not a modern survivalist's bunker world. It's a 1950s conception of being bright and being cheerful and keeping the domestic aura going when everything above your head is burning. And it's a, it's a lovely, it's a lovely story. So it wasn't a qualitative decision, it was purely fit [00:54:00] with the VIVID.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: So, so you've made this distinction a couple times between weird fiction and science fiction. This is, of course, a conversation topic that comes up a lot on Whiskey and the Weird. Yeah. How would you... Where, where do you draw the line? Oh. Why do you draw the line between science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird fiction?
Or just how would you define weird? Strange, the uncanny. Or how would you define weird? Yeah. What, what's your operating definition for that?
Alasdair: I overheard two- We've got
Jess: three hours. Yeah, go.
Alasdair: I overheard two ladies talking at a charity bookshop, one of my favorite charity bookshops the other day say, "What's the difference between fantasy and science fiction?"
And- Don't, don't go there. Two days later, "And I think you'll find that Kingsley Amis
Jess: said-" Right, right,
Alasdair: right. "... I have some, I, um, I have some handouts here." And, you know, days would go by. Okay, uh, a very quick, a very, very, very... And you can throw stones at this, and counter examples will come [00:55:00] swimming at you before I've even finished speaking.
Oh,
Jess: yeah, of course.
Alasdair: But very roughly, science fiction, I think, is extrapolation within a given scientific theory or tradition.
Damien: Okay.
Alasdair: Right?
Damien: Fair. Mm-hmm,
Alasdair: mm-hmm. So you might say, let's take general relativity, let's take spacetime curvature, let's push it.
Ryan: Right.
Alasdair: And you get closed time like curls and backward time travel.
It's not
Ryan: possible yet, but it might be one day.
Alasdair: Exactly. Yeah. So it's the
Damien: fiction of science is what you're saying?
Alasdair: That I think... Well, that I think is where some of the, the impetus comes from. I mean, if you look at, if you look at H.G. Wells setting up the time machine with his marvelous lecture about time as a fourth, as a fourth, as a fourth dimensional space.
Damien: Right.
Alasdair: You take the framework, you explore it, and you think, right, this framework is true for the purposes of this fiction.
Damien: Right.
Alasdair: Fantasy, as I see it, is more like you have a different set of working assumptions altogether [00:56:00] You're not very troubled by whether this fits with physics. Mm-hmm. Physics, to all intents and purposes, has no claim on your attention at all.
Damien: Okay. And I, I know you said- If you want to have dragons- ... there are a lot of gray areas here in this, Alistair, but I'm curious. Like, you look at works like Dennis O'Malley's The Rook series, which is kind of like a modern-day secret governmental agency that's fighting crime and- Oh, yeah
but they all have, like, special powers. Or you look at- Right ... like, you know, X-Men or something like that. Yeah. Which is mutagenics. It takes a scientific route, but- Right ... basically really, really, really stretches- Really stretches it ... the limits of how that science is affected. Do you consider that fantasy?
Couldn't that be called magic as well, and then doesn't that classify it as fantasy?
Alasdair: I think, uh, the problem is that you can very easily turn the one into the other with a bit of- Right ... a bit of banter. Mm-hmm. I mean, um... You know, I mean, there's a lovely-
Jess: And Damian Will.
Alasdair: I mean, there's a lovely, I mean, there's a lovely Neil Gaiman alternate world [00:57:00] Marvel comic called 1604, where he imagines the X-Men and company in the 17th century.
And of course, there's not much about genetics, but everyone thinks that they're witches. Sure.
Ryan: Right. Yeah.
Alasdair: And you think, well, you know, any sufficiently advanced mutation would be indistinguishable from witchcraft. Or from comic suitably
Ryan: embellished. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: And you think, well, yeah, it, it, it's not gonna be easy.
And, and of course, bringing us back to sort of alternate worlds. I mean, if, if, if one of the worlds that you tunnel into has a different set of physical laws, then everyday reality there might allow things that are-
Damien: That's a great point ...
Alasdair: magical. And so you think, well, is this science fiction, is it fantasy?
And it, it is at best a very, very, very permeable line. So, and I'm conscious it's not a great one, and there are gonna be, and there are gonna be problem cases. But the weird, I think, can straddle both of those. Mm-hmm. I mean, the weird doesn't even have to be supernatural [00:58:00] or counterfactual- Mm ... as we ordinarily understand it.
In a way, the horror doesn't have to be. You know, there are some perfectly alarming horror stories that have nothing counterfactual about them at all. I mean, one of the most frightening horror stories I've ever read is by Joe R. Lansdale, The Night They Missed the Horror Show.
Ryan: Oh, that's such a good story.
And there's nothing- And
Alasdair: there's nothing supernatural about it. No ... nothing, nothing supernatural about it at all, and it is human evil-
Damien: Mm ...
Alasdair: and the banality of it. And it, it is, it, it's, it's a story that this is some sort of tribute to Joe R. Lansdale that I really don't like to go back and revisit. It's brilliantly done, and there's nothing supernatural about it at all.
So the weird, as I see it, is, is, can be any of those. It can be horror, it can be science fictional, it can be supernatural. It has something to do with how you use it. I mean, it has something to do with, I mean, sometimes the same premise could serve you for the weird, per se, or serve you for-
Ryan: Mm-hmm ...
Alasdair: science fiction.
An example, [00:59:00] Donald Wollheim's rather lovely short story, Mimic. Mm-hmm. Don't know if you know, you, you'll know Mimic. About a man who comes to realize that there's an insectoid form of life which has adapted to urban living. It just looks like a man in a raincoat when you get close, and it's an insect. A great idea.
And you think, well, you could spin that in all sorts of ways. I mean, you could imagine, you know, a kind of alternate world story where there just are things living among us.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Right. Kind of insectoid.
Ryan: It can
Alasdair: become a horror story very easily. And
Ryan: you
Alasdair: kind of worry, worry with them. Yeah. Yeah. Or it, or it could be a kind of a science fiction or sort of, you know- Mm-hmm
different mores, different cultures. But it's, it's a weird story in Wollheim's hands because there's a man who comes to think that one is living near him.
Jess: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: And, and then he gets to think, well, insects in the wild have predators, so what preys on a human-sized insect mimic? And so it, [01:00:00] it's, it's just that one for me is just trembling on science fiction versus- Yeah
the weird, and I wouldn't like to call it where it lands. I love
Damien: it- So would you say, would you say that w- weird is more or less a parent chara- category?
Alasdair: Yes. Yeah, I think so. It, it's, it's, I mean, it's certainly not a qualitative one. I don't use any of these in a qualitative way. Sure. Right. I like science fiction, I like fantasy.
I like the weird, I like horror. I don't read anything- It, it's
Damien: very umbrella-like. It's very, it's very- Yeah ... it's very sort of th- this is the cloud cover of weird. Yeah. And there are so many- Yeah ... different things that can fit under it easily.
Alasdair: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So I mean, a, a very rough definition is that science fiction at least pays some sort of notional tribute to a particular scientific framework.
Mm-hmm. And fantasy isn't encumbered in that way. And the weird can be either of those- Mm-hmm ... but obviously done for unsettling effect.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Mm-hmm.
Ryan: And that we, we, we can- We talked a lot about this when we covered E.T.A. Hoffman's The Sandman. That was one of the earlier- Yes ... weird story [01:01:00] examples that we've talked about.
And, and the way you just described Waldheim's The Mimic made me think of Michael S- Michael Cisco's story. I can't remember the title of it off the top of my head, but it's about a, a, a boy who has a neighbor who wears a mask while he's working in his garage. Oh, yeah. I know it. And, and that's, that's, that's strange- Yeah
if you think about it, but it's- Uh, uh ... but people working in their garage is not a weird thing. People in masks is not a weird thing. No. No. I get it. It's just from this boy's perspective, he sees this man all the time, and he's always wearing this mask, and it, and it has a very, as you say, a very unsettling effect on the reader.
Right.
Damien: That story is Intentionally Left Blank by Michael Cisco.
Ryan: Thank you. Thank you, Damien.
Damien: Yeah. Cis- Cisco
Alasdair: is very, very good. Oh, yeah. I like Michael Cisco as well.
Jess: Okay. Most of the stories in this collection, the parallel realms are significantly worse than- Hmm ... where the main characters would be normally.
If you were tunneling into some sort of [01:02:00] parallel or alternate history, what kind of- good version do you wanna find? What's the most positive, utopic-
Alasdair: This isn't an alternative world, but, uh, I got the first of James Gurney's Dinotopia- ... secondhand, 'cause I like the cover. And I thought, "Oh, carts pulled by triceratops.
Me at six is jumping up and down." And it, it's not an alternative world, because it's supposed to be a kind of a lost archipelago. Mm-hmm,
Ryan: mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Right. But I thought, "This would be great, you know, dinosaurs and humans, and they've all got histories and traditions and faiths and different ways of living, and some of them do some jobs.
And there are jobs that are more suitable if you're like, you know, 30 feet long with a tail that- Of course ... go, has a separate brain. And there are jobs that are more suitable if you're a small sort of insect, you know, insect-eating dinosaur. And jobs are more suitable if you, you know, if you've got opposable thumbs."
And I thought- ... that would be, that would be great. That's one of the few- Fair enough ... fantasies I would, I would like to live in. So basically set the controls of my [01:03:00] machine to Dinotopia.
Jess: Not Jurassic Park, specifically Dinotopia.
Alasdair: Not Jurassic. Dinotopia.
Damien: Yeah. I like it.
Alasdair: Do, do you- You put the topia
Damien: in Dinotopia.
Jess: Yeah.
Alasdair: It's the topia bit that's important. Yeah. It isn't just random flesh-eating tons of hellishness chasing you over the savannas. It's, it's an altogether more kind of harmonious-
Jess: Yes, perfect ... I
Alasdair: just liked it. I just thought that this is a, this is a lovely fictional world.
Jess: No, that's an incredible answer.
If it makes sense,
Ryan: you know? That raises another question for me. So a couple of episodes ago, we were talking about the idea of a multiverse or, or even string theory. And, and Jessica let out this sort of record sigh-
Jess: Yeah. ...
Ryan: and said that the idea of a multiverse was just exhausting to her. If I can ask you to put on your philosopher's hat for- Oh
for a moment, do, do you think there is a multiverse? And, and does that prospect either excite you or exhaust you or something else?
Alasdair: I'm gonna give a classic philosopher's[01:04:00]
answer and say there are advantages to- It depends. Yeah. There are advantages to thinking that, that this world is, is a cross-section, a segment of something much bigger. Some of the reasons come from quantum physics.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Alasdair: Some of them come from philosophy. I mentioned some of this maybe at, maybe at excessive length.
I tried to break down a distinction of ki- you know, of kinds of multiverse. Mm-hmm. And, and, and the kind of king of th- th- the multiverse in philosophy is a now late American philosopher called David Lewis, who espoused a philosophy called modal realism, according to which- Mm ... every logically, not physically, every logically possible way a world could be is the way that some world actually is So that includes all the histories that you can think of- Mm-hmm
but it also includes all the ways that you can travel between histories.
Damien: Hmm.
Alasdair: You see?
Damien: We got a real library of Babel here, don't we?
Alasdair: It- exactly. But, but I have to say with the [01:05:00] greatest of respect to Borges, worse. Vastly, vastly worse. As I say to my students, there are possible worlds that consist of five-mile high gold statues of the German philosopher Leibniz repeated infinitely.
And there are worlds marzipan five-mile high- ... statues of w- and on and on.
Damien: Well, I'll, I'll go to those worlds. Thank you very much.
Alasdair: And, and, and I'll be honest, my objections to this are aesthetic. I find it- Mm-hmm ... terrifying. I don't, you know, that's not a philosophical objection at all. I mean, I put a little passing joke in there in the-
in the introduction, the footnote, to say that, you know, a big multiverse won't just, won't just include worlds where the First World War was fought between dinosaurs who fire nuclear missiles or whatever. Right.
Ryan: Right. That was a
Alasdair: good line. You know, a big, a big multiverse will include a world where the [01:06:00] First World War was fought between nuclear missiles who fire dinosaurs at one another.
And my editor, Johnny Davidson, sent me my complimentary copy, and he did a little drawing of two dinosaurs- Aw,
Damien: funny ...
Alasdair: who fired at one another. I've, I've... It's around somewhere.
Damien: Okay.
Alasdair: I've misfiled it. So there are, I mean, there's a surprising amount of work that you can do with the idea that, you know- Mm-hmm
well, you know, what if you vary the physics a bit? And, but, but suppose that the places where you vary the physics are real places, you know, they are just as concrete, and if they have inhabitants, they're just as real, you know, as we are. So I accept that there's a lot of useful explanatory work to be done with multiverses, and I wish I had a really good philosophical objection to them.
I just don't like it. You know? I just don't like the idea of a reality that is, is unimaginably-
ramified variations on- It's
Jess: [01:07:00] exhausting ...
Alasdair: on all of this. I mean, it's, it- This
Ryan: is what Jessica said the, the other episode. She said something like "Oh, there's another Jessica Berg out there. Fine, maybe she can do my chores."
Alasdair: Well, it's, I mean, you know, I mean, it's, you know, we, we all, you know, we all kind of like to think of ourselves in the closest possible worlds that have gone all sort of Man in the High Castle.
We're all stoically fighting for the resistance.
Damien: Right.
Alasdair: But not everybody will be in the resistance, and that includes- ... your counterparts and mine, I'm sorry to say. Right. That's
Damien: very true. Right? You know. I, I don't wanna think about those people. I wanna be, I wanna think about the people that y- you know, just have a little more hair, I think, for me specifically.
You
Ryan: have loads of hair,
Damien: Damian. Yes, I know, Ryan. You're bald. Alistair, I'm really curious. , Let's take a little bit more of a myopic view about your alternate- Sure ... possible versions. If you were to edit another iteration of these Tales of the Weird series, either in lieu of this one-
Alasdair: Right
Damien: going back a few years, or let's place ourselves in the, in the, what we see as the real world- Mm-hmm ... [01:08:00] and talk about the next one, what would it be?
Alasdair: Ah. Well, I mean, there may even have been a letter hypothetically written to the Tales of the Weird- Ah ... outlining another proposal. Well, hypothetically then. It might hypothetically be called something like Haunted Futures: Weird Tales of Time- Ooh
by Women. That's a good title.
Damien: The time travel guy theoretically writes a time travel anthology letter to the B- British Library.
Alasdair: Yeah. Let it rip, I
Damien: say. Let it rip. Let's have it.
Alasdair: I, I, I did, I did think that it would be fun to take... I was, I didn't wanna tread on the toes of a brilliant Mike Ashley anthology for the, for the British Library science fiction classics.
Right. He did one called- Mm-hmm ... About Time, which is, you know, ranges over some f- splendid, as is the way of Mike Ashley anthology- ... splendid examples of primarily golden age science fiction. But related to science fiction, the, there's what you've probably seen referred to as time slip stories.
Damien: Sure.
Alasdair: Now, time travel is a process that's usually got a physical device or an engine- Mm-hmm
or an explanation. [01:09:00] You know, something like Wells' something like, you know, a, a brass bicycle, put that in quotes. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, a DeLorean or a TARDIS or something. Of course. Mm-hmm,
Ryan: mm-hmm.
Alasdair: But then th- there are stories much closer to the uncanny where, where time's just- somehow touch one another-
Damien: Little
Alasdair: different
Damien: and it,
Alasdair: yeah, and it's not clear who's traveled to who-
Damien: Right ...
Alasdair: or even if you can say who's traveled to who, but something, you know, that are- Yeah ... people who, without either of them being dead, people from different centuries are somehow, you know, on the port. And
Damien: I
Alasdair: realized-
Damien: More like time bleed, it seems like almost like a time bleed as opposed to- Yeah
a slip, like a little bit of a melding.
Alasdair: That's right, a time bleed, a time meld, a time slip. And I found that there were quite a lot of story... I mean, I, I'd wanted to have as many female authors in Codes of Destiny as I could, and I thought, well, let's just see how far you could go if you had a list of all female authors- [01:10:00] Mm-hmm
with stories, again, over the same sort of period, mid-19th to late 20th, early 21st, that involve time, involuntary time travel, time slippage, that kind of thing. And I may have, I may have outlined this.
I'm excited. We may be interested in reading it. I'm excited to see- So yeah, that's- ... if it's your possibility
that sounds great. That sounds super interesting ... what, uh, in an alternate realm- Well, I, I, I did, um, spoiler, I did outline this
Ryan: This has been a fascinating time and a wonderful opportunity to chat with you, Alistair. Thank you so much for joining us. That's gonna do it for this episode of Whiskey and the Weird. We are so grateful to each and every one of you who have listened.
If you are grateful to have listened, would you please drop us a rating or review wherever you find your podcasts? As always, we wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird. And Damien, if they'd like to tell us about their time slippages, where can they do that?
Damien: You know, but keep it PG-13, folks.
Uh, you can find us on the socials, @WhiskeyandtheWeird, @WhiskeyandtheWeird. We spell our whiskeys with an E and we hope you do, too. If not, may your time slippage be something that's not so Nazi-esque, but maybe a little bit more just inconvenient.
Ryan: And we are all waiting [01:11:00] with bated breath for Jessica to make the announcement of what our next season will be about.
But we're gonna have to wait a little bit longer for that announcement. Sorry, guys. I know. So stay tuned to those social media channels that Damien just mentioned because that's where we'll make that announcement about the forthcoming season 10. But fear not, there will be a season 10 and it will be released sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And we're together here with...
Damien: Um, Alistair Richmond. Who says
Ryan: thank you. And all four of us today make up Whiskey and the Weird. Somebody send us home.
Jess: always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Thank you everybody. Bye-bye