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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 7, Summer 1945
Page 152
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152 FANTASY COMMENTATOR wonder that Blair and nearly all of his laboratory had simply disappeared. They had not been blown outside, nor had they been reduced to mere rubble. Where they had actually gone was a question that Richard Sayles never liked to speculate on thereafter. He hoped, however, that Julian Blair had found his beloved at last. III Now, a number of similarities to Lovecraft (aside from the cardinal menace from Outside) at once leap to our attention. First, the welding of modern scientific concepts of space and time with the oldest and best of the weird and supernatural (see "The Lord of R'lyeh" in Fantasy Commentator, vol. 1, no. 6). Then we have the sober narration of facts in almost a documentary style by a participant---long after everything has happened. This is a favorite device of Lovecraft's. This gives us the mature, reflective, analytical type of story in which instead of being dazed by the swift-moving statements of events as they occur, we have the benefit of the narrator's considered judgement and the advantage of a considerable temporal perspective. Next comes to mind the choice of significant detail. Remarks carefully chosen to arouse our darkest apprehensions which are later confirmed in a most agreeably horrible manner; hints vague enough to keep us wondering yet concrete enough to foreshadow the terrors yet to come. A few illustrations will suffice: In To Walk the Night we are told that on the evening after the strange Selena first appeared from nowhere into Le Normand's house, the professor made a mysterious trip with his car and was known to have stopped on some unimaginable errand off the main highway near the town. Was it to destroy evidence of Selena's arrival on this planet? Perhaps the space-time envelope in which her mind had traversed the vast expanse of a trans-galactic ether? We can only surmise, but the incident leaves us expecting the worst and in the end we are not disappointed. When Jerry and Selena are lying in each other's arms gazing at the soft, beautiful moonlight, Selena murmurs, "It is this which my people do not know." Did she refer to an ecstasy of love's consummation which was completely unknown to her race? Or was it the moonlight: were her people of a dim night-world where no satellite existed to help make the long hours of the sun's absence bearable? We are never completely sure, but a terrifying feeling of her absolute alienage from our world and its emotions grips us. Her mind was a cold, ruthless product of a science and a culture eons ahead of ours and as remote as Sirius or Antares. Yet at the end she actually cried like a human child over Hans Christian Anderson's beautifully sad fairy tale of the little mermaid who tried to become human for a while but finally had to return to her own aquatic world. In The Edge of Running Water Julian Blair's niece, Anne, tells Richard that on one terrible occasion she heard in the laboratory a whisper a whisper not unlike the faint swish detected on a short-wave ratio when an incredibly weak signal just barely fades into audibility. A thrill of horror creeps through the reader's mind at this chance remark. Later he understands: it must have been a faint rustle from Outside. Further on in the story, when the hired woman, Elora Marcy, is found at the foot of the staircase it is assumed that she died of a fall. But, anon, when her body is discovered in the river we learn she was killed instantly by a blow and thrown into the water after walking from the house in company with the sinister medium, Mrs. Walters. It dawns on us with dreadful clarity that Elora was only stunned by something she observed or felt in the laboratory while cleaning. She must have been carried to the foot of the stairs by the hulking Mrs. Walters to fool the rest of the household, and later enticed by this same personage to the river where she was disposed of. Horrid speculations
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152 FANTASY COMMENTATOR wonder that Blair and nearly all of his laboratory had simply disappeared. They had not been blown outside, nor had they been reduced to mere rubble. Where they had actually gone was a question that Richard Sayles never liked to speculate on thereafter. He hoped, however, that Julian Blair had found his beloved at last. III Now, a number of similarities to Lovecraft (aside from the cardinal menace from Outside) at once leap to our attention. First, the welding of modern scientific concepts of space and time with the oldest and best of the weird and supernatural (see "The Lord of R'lyeh" in Fantasy Commentator, vol. 1, no. 6). Then we have the sober narration of facts in almost a documentary style by a participant---long after everything has happened. This is a favorite device of Lovecraft's. This gives us the mature, reflective, analytical type of story in which instead of being dazed by the swift-moving statements of events as they occur, we have the benefit of the narrator's considered judgement and the advantage of a considerable temporal perspective. Next comes to mind the choice of significant detail. Remarks carefully chosen to arouse our darkest apprehensions which are later confirmed in a most agreeably horrible manner; hints vague enough to keep us wondering yet concrete enough to foreshadow the terrors yet to come. A few illustrations will suffice: In To Walk the Night we are told that on the evening after the strange Selena first appeared from nowhere into Le Normand's house, the professor made a mysterious trip with his car and was known to have stopped on some unimaginable errand off the main highway near the town. Was it to destroy evidence of Selena's arrival on this planet? Perhaps the space-time envelope in which her mind had traversed the vast expanse of a trans-galactic ether? We can only surmise, but the incident leaves us expecting the worst and in the end we are not disappointed. When Jerry and Selena are lying in each other's arms gazing at the soft, beautiful moonlight, Selena murmurs, "It is this which my people do not know." Did she refer to an ecstasy of love's consummation which was completely unknown to her race? Or was it the moonlight: were her people of a dim night-world where no satellite existed to help make the long hours of the sun's absence bearable? We are never completely sure, but a terrifying feeling of her absolute alienage from our world and its emotions grips us. Her mind was a cold, ruthless product of a science and a culture eons ahead of ours and as remote as Sirius or Antares. Yet at the end she actually cried like a human child over Hans Christian Anderson's beautifully sad fairy tale of the little mermaid who tried to become human for a while but finally had to return to her own aquatic world. In The Edge of Running Water Julian Blair's niece, Anne, tells Richard that on one terrible occasion she heard in the laboratory a whisper a whisper not unlike the faint swish detected on a short-wave ratio when an incredibly weak signal just barely fades into audibility. A thrill of horror creeps through the reader's mind at this chance remark. Later he understands: it must have been a faint rustle from Outside. Further on in the story, when the hired woman, Elora Marcy, is found at the foot of the staircase it is assumed that she died of a fall. But, anon, when her body is discovered in the river we learn she was killed instantly by a blow and thrown into the water after walking from the house in company with the sinister medium, Mrs. Walters. It dawns on us with dreadful clarity that Elora was only stunned by something she observed or felt in the laboratory while cleaning. She must have been carried to the foot of the stairs by the hulking Mrs. Walters to fool the rest of the household, and later enticed by this same personage to the river where she was disposed of. Horrid speculations
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