46: The Descendant (Discussion)

Podsothoth: A Lovecraft Book Club

In which Tod and Claire discuss The Descendant, by HP Lovecraft, first published in the winter 1938 issue of Leaves. We also talk about Charles Fort and the Fortean Times, kind of a lot.
Links to things mentioned in the show include Angela Collier's "physics crackpots: a theory" and https://hplovecraft.com. We also talked about NecronomiCON Providence, which I hope you go to in mid-August.
Please be aware, this is a horror podcast, so it might not be for everyone. Notably, this story fragment touches on the troubling topics of the ravages of age and dementia, the Roman empire and medieval England, the dreaded Necronomicon, 90's-era Satanism, and a nihilistic longing to escape the natural world. If these topics are likely to trouble you, you are urged to skip this episode.
Editor's note: At about 12m30s, Tod states that Rats in the Walls was written in 1929. That is incorrect. Rats in the Walls was published in 1924, two years before this was written, which implies that maybe this actually was intended as a sequel (but with different names and not really a sequel). In other words, Claire was right and Tod was wrong. That's fine.

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