TOD 016 The Outer Dark and Stories from the Borderland LIVE from NecronomiCon 2017

In this podcast The Outer Dark presents a program featuring Craig Laurance Gidney, Scott R. Jones, Stephen Graham Jones, Peter Straub and Sonya Taaffe. It was hosted by Scott Nicolay, moderated by Anya Martin and recorded at NecronomiCon 2017 before a live audience. This jam-packed episode also features a NecronomiCon report with Justin Steele and Anya Martin, as well as “Stories from the Borderland Live!: Bringing the Stories Back Alive: Expanding and Illustrating the Canon of The Weird” with artists Michael Bukowski and Jeanne D’Angelo. These presentations were recorded live on Saturday August 19 and Friday August 18, 2017.

Show Notes

The Outer Dark presents an all-new panel discussion recorded at NecronomiCon 2017 featuring Craig Laurance Gidney, Scott R. Jones, Stephen Graham Jones, Peter Straub and Sonya Taaffe. hosted by Scott Nicolay and moderated by Anya Martin (00:18:25). The discussion focuses on long term trends in Weird fiction including living in Weird sociopolitical times, the growth of the Weird Renaissance and its effect on the greater Literature Fantastica, new Weird visions by marginalized voices, destabilization versus reassurance/escapism, ‘reality as a trampoline,’ Weird fiction’s conservative past versus a different kind of Weird story emerging now, Lovecraft’s anxieties as a ‘window’ onto a much larger horrifying world, ‘new’ voices challenging our concept of what is The Weird, embracing versus rejecting fear and loving Otherness, altered market forces and the effect of editorial shifts and the rise of the small press, why speculative fiction should be interstitial, writing ‘things we don’t know,’ less explored topics in Weird fiction, and some exciting announcements about the future of The Outer Dark. This panel took place on Saturday August 19 at noon.

The episode continues with a brief introduction (1:26:12) and then “Stories from the Borderland Live!: Bringing the Stories Back Alive: Expanding and Illustrating the Canon of The Weird” (1:29:50), a behind-the-words/art presentation featuring Scott, Anya and artists Michael Bukowski and Jeanne D’Angelo. During NecronomiCon 2015, Michael and Scott conceived the idea for this unique collaborative project designed to introduce audiences to great Weird stories that have fallen through the cracks of the canon–and the monsters that inhabit them. Sixteen episodes later, Michael and Scott returned to Providence to share a new and never-before-seen episode of SFTB before a live audience, followed by a discussion of the research behind the series led by project editor Anya Martin. For a grand finale, artist Jeanne D’Angelo debuted the art for the new parallel series, Tales from the Crossroads. View the art in the slideshow that accompanied this presentation at this YouTube link. This event took place on Friday August 18 at 1:30 p.m.

Justin Steele and Anya Martin join Scott for a NecronomiCon 2017 recap at the program’s start (0:00:19) and close (2:44:25) including con highlights such as literary launches such as Dim Shores’ Looming Low anthology, edited by Justin and Sam Cowan), Sam’s Resist and Refuse magazine, the NecronomiCon 2017 Memento Book, new collaborations between Matthew M. Bartlett and artist Yves Tourigny, anthologies edited by Joe Pulver and Scott Dwyer, and much more.