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The Dunwich Harrow
(This story is not a riff on Trucks/Maximum Overdrive, but rather on the 1974 TV movie Killdozer! which was itself based on a 1944 Theodore Sturgeon short story of the same name.)
This is a sequel to The Cooler Out of Space, in which the last fragment of the Entity contained in the cooler temporarily escapes Bane and Finch, following the Miskatonic upstream until it arrives in Dunwich.
There, it possesses and animates an abandoned field harrow, and literally cuts a bloody swath across the Upper Miskatonic Valley, until it is cornered and destroyed by the investigators.
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The Cooler Out of Space
Not exactly a cooler, but rather a cryogenic container for exotic biological specimens. It plummets to Earth when a returning corporate Mars probe breaks up just outside the atmosphere.
It impacts in the Miskatoic Valley, and the entity that emerges is both alien and eldritch. Mythos mischief ensues.
Atticus Bane and his trusty sidekick Finch come to the rescue.
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And What Man Knows Kadath?
This title is excerpted from The Dunwich Horror, which itself excerpted it from the Necromonicon.
At Miskatonic, there is yet another semi-secret society composed of faculty, students and alumni. They are an eclectic group, but one thing they all have in common is that each has undertaken an arduous pilgrimage even unto Kadath, in the Cold Waste, there to learn forgotten secrets of mental and spiritual discipline and fortitude. They have all endured the cruel tutelage of ancient and inscrutable beings; tutelage that often threatened to break mind, body and soul.
They do this because they are tasked with detecting, containing and eradicating manifestations of The King in Yellow. Not the entity, the Thing behind the Pallid Mask, but the actual cursed manuscript, which has metastasized into every other medium now available: ebooks, audiobooks, videos, TV specials, as well as the constant underground – often literally – performances of the play.
But every once in a while, despite their arcane training and discipline, one of their number succumbs; the consequences are always disastrous…
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Cue the Oz Storm Music
On 12 July 2022 I was treated to this epic storm front sweeping over the Home Depot parking lot in Reston.
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Back in the Saddle Again
As I am bringing this site back to life after a long-ish hiatus, I feel it appropriate to quote Firesign Theatre:
Back from the shadows again
Out where an In-jun’s your friend
Where the veg’tables are green
And you can pee into the stream
Yes, we’re back from the Shadows again
We’re goin’ back to the shadows again
Out where an Indian’s your friend
Where the veg’tables are green
And you can pee right into the stream
(And that’s important!)
We’re back from the Shadows again
I can tell you, almost to the minute, when I became in my heart a true martial artist. It was around 40 minutes into the premiere episode of the TV series Longstreet which aired at 9:00 PM on September 16, 1971 on the ABC network. It happened when Bruce Lee articulated the core philosophy of what the world would soon know as his martial art, Jeet Kune Do:
I vowed in that moment to live my life by those words. And I have failed miserably almost every day since. But Bruce, I am told, also lived by many another Taoist aphorism, including “Fall down nine times, rise up ten.” In my case, I would have to multiply it by a factor of at least a thousand, but you get the drift.
I include here the text of this version, which is my favorite among many:
“Empty your mind… Be formless…shapeless…like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or creep or drip or CRASH! Be water, my friend…”
I recommend that you seek out and watch the entire episode, The Way of the Intercepting Fist, which can currently be seen on YouTube.
With apologies to John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. And Slim Pickens, for that matter…
My earliest recollections of pondering some of the weightier issues of Life, the Universe and Everything do not involve home, school or even church. Rather, they center around that venerable icon of early TV sci-fi, The Outer Limits.
Among the show’s trademarks were the often eerie and pedantic pro- and epilogues delivered in the distinctive “Control Voice” of actor Vic Perrin, who also made many cameo appearances on the show, and later on Star Trek – you may particularly remember him as the voice of the precocious space probe “Nomad”.
For lack of anything better to do with my time, I’ve decided to gather them together for my own enjoyment. I begin each volume with the original pilot intro, which is somewhat longer than the edited version used thereafter, and I conclude, of course, with the majestic theme music of Dominic Frontiere.
In the beginning, these monologues were used simply to set the scene for each episode, but it wasn’t long before they were posing important and profound questions for the time – or for any time, for that matter.
I commend you to them, and hope you find something of passing value in their wisdom.
Enjoy!