Bryce Beattie's Blog

by Ed Earl Rapp

narrated by Matthew Hemphill

“Keep going!” roared Thomas. “Get in there and clean out those rotors or I’ll shoot you down!” Webb climbed desperately, hid body buffeted by the suction from the giant wheel.

Check out Dark Fantasies, a short story collection by Misha Burnett.

“As a newspaperman, he couldn’t decently or ethically do
anything about it. But as a man in love with the girl
reporter, he had to make his move when she was threatened…”

Today the StoryHack podcast brings you “Kill That Headline” by Robert Leslie Bellem, read bt Matthew Hemphill.

If you like the podcast, be sure to check out issues of the magazine.

Ambition gripped the mind of Tarra Greghold, and she sought to rule the world, unaware that a robot mind could become ambitious as well.

Today’s terrific tale is Revolt of the Robots, by Arthur R. Tofte. About 50 minutes long.

“Bring him here to me. We shall soon find out who will be master.”

If you enjoy the podcast, you should also enjoy the printed StoryHack magazine. It’s full of action & adventure stories by some of today’s best authors.

Each warrior was given a sacred bundle, to keep and to pass on in reverence down through generations, never to open it, never to reveal what power lay within. Now, that generational secret is threatened, and it may be more dangerous than anyone could have imagined.

That’s right, it’s another John Thunstone adventure! This time we have Frederick Gero Heimbach narrating. You can find out more about him at: fheimbach.com.

If you enjoy these stories, please tell somebody about the podcast. I’d love to share these classic works with as many as possible.

That’s right, it’s another Robert E. Howard short story! This time we’ll hear Sea Curse. Is the old woman a witch? Will the sea exact revenge upon a pair of detestable criminals? Listen and find out.

We have another guest narrator this week, this time Zachary Clark. You can find him on twitter @ZacharyW_Clark.

If you like the podcast, can support it buy buying copies of the print magazine.

Today we have a piece by Clark Ashton Smith titled, “The Enchantress of Sylaire.”

Her land was old in evil and sorcery-and all who dwelt therein were ancient as the land… and equally cursed.

Our narrator today is Christopher Lawson. You can find him on Twitter: ChrisMLawson

Thanks to Jesse at SFFAudio for providing the scan.

Submissions for StoryHack Action & Adventure will be open starting October 1, 2020 for one week, closing on the 8th whenever I wake up and remember to turn off the system. I’ll only be accepting stories for a single issue this time. Best of luck!

by ROBOT E Howard

This story is different from all the others I have posted to the podcast. This one is an original story. ROBOT E Howard is the nickname I gave to the AI program used for generating this story. The iteration of AI software was trained on the text from all of the public domain stories about Conan by Robert E. Howard. As you will read, you’ll notice that the AI is pretty good at making sentences that sound real, at times even wonderful, but it is still bad at making plots. So expect a lot of nonsense. I did edit this story a little, to remove the worst of the non-sequiturs, to correct a little grammar/punctuation, and to switch up a couple of names to keep the number of characters down. However, I added nothing of my own. And so that ROBOT E Howard & I avoid any trademark infringement, the barbarian in this tale’s name is Nanoc.

I will include the full text below so you can follow along with the neural-net generated voice narrator.

A Knife In A Dark Hand

DAWN was just whitening the east when Zabibi came upon the shores of the pool. Tina, Natala’s sister, was playing with her new-found toy. But Natala had never dreamed of playing with such tiny things, and she was too used to the flicker of bright white paint to have any need of playing with anything but a fruit.

She had toyed with the little things, and she was just now aware of her fascination with the creatures that squatted like black shadows in the shadow of the cliff. She realized that Natala rubbed the nape of her neck. Natala did not flinch at all, just as she had with her first time playing with a golden peach.

Tina clapped her hands in front of her sister, and her head slightly toward them both. “What did you say?” she asked uneasily. “What do you think I should say?”

Natala did not reply; her dark, sensuous eyes, made clink against the dampness of the pool. She rose to her feet, rubbing her pink palms in her painful excitement.

“I have dreamed what Natala saw,” Zabibi whimpered. “I shall tell you, by Crom!”

“We shall see,” agreed Natala.

With no further comment, Zabibi glided to the distant arches. She did not glance fearfully over her shoulder at the archways.

They were not inviting. Giant black, gaunt, wisps of darkness were closing in about them, huddling menacingly about them. Their silence was sinister as a threat of frost. The low singing of the gongs seemed loud in the deep blackness, like the padding of a swarming river-devil.

With a muttered oath Natala snatched her sword and threw it carelessly aside.

Entering the archway behind her, Natala saw that all were hidden in the corners of the chamber. The walls were not carved in anything unusual, yet they seemed to represent a scene of colossal proportions. Fantastic columns marched along each side of the walls, depicting various scenes from which the voices of the gods had seemed hollow and ghostly.

The Cimmerian stood alone and motionless, the priests had moved. They turned their backs silently, and Natala saw that the door did not give to their efforts.

Then began a curious game, a bizarre and apparently endless one in which each priest followed his own example.

First, each priest went through a door that opened into a corridor. The others passed through several corridors, and each door opened into an alcove, which was larger, but smaller, than the others. Then they went through a curtained doorway into a smaller chamber that was more clearly lighted. They saw, among the curtained alcoves, only the four priests, the four who wore silk robes. They seemed to be treading on invisible feet, treading noiseless tread.

Natala’s curiosity prompted her to visualize them as gray stone statues that walked on invisible feet, treading nothing but their own invisible tongue.

But their tread was no idle boast. A quick glance across the chamber showed them no evil shape; behind them, on the opposite side of the chamber, stood another horror, smaller and more disgusting. This time it was a gray stone which contrasted grotesquely with the clean-cut, compact lines of the primitive Stygian wretch. What lay behind those translucent green stone shelves was more apparent. They lay like dark, cloaked images, but when they looked over the brooding wall they saw something animate and sentient.

This realization came over Natala, which made her wince and quiver in every limb. Then one hand was pressed to her side and she stared fearfully down the long dark road leading away from the chamber.

She saw it, and a muscular arm hooked about its hilt. This arm was concealed by a pair of tigerish fingers.

Natala saw it glimmer and her heart skipped a beat. The stranger was not a Stygian. There was no hypocrisy in his eyes. The man was as different from a Kothian as was possible, if not more distinct, in his approach to women.

Natala’s red, upturned face and the ring of arms was more savage than any her race had ever seen. It was the aspect of a panther, but what it was, and why it was there, Natala could not say. The things that made it hideous were only scratches. When they had looked so closely over the wall, she had known they would come again.

What lurking horror could mimic that unholy union of woe and shame? The man confronting her had a long start, though Natala doubted if he ever had to ride that road again.

The other four facing the door seemed less fearful of the peril they faced than the priests. They were four Stygian women, naked but for a scanty silk clout, with a jeweled girdle, but the fire in their eyes was more intense than the burning of their swords. Their black locks were dark as night, and their lashes were drawn back between wisps of blackened hair.

On one hand, Natala felt as if her flesh would betray the chill of the blood that seethed under her thin skin. Her heart skipped a beat. The man was a barbarian; he had killed a man in her road. Yet she felt a kinship with the man she had seen carried out.

To fight a man whose name was Nanoc, in the grip of a frosty mountain, was to die by starvation, to be cut off as a leech sacrifices to a god, to be cut up as a symbol of the futility of human suffering.

She fought a desire to fight Zabibi, but it was useless. She knew she could not save herself from the madness of what she had witnessed. The man she had seen was utterly without mercy or compassion. She let it be; it was all in the details she had escaped—the realization of her thwarted destiny, her furious resolution, her burning shame and humiliation.

What this man stood doing in Natala’s sight was equally at the heart of her despair. He was like all his kind—a man who came of a race born to treasure and rule, who had sunk into ultimate wealth and power only because his people gave him a wide berth. This man was clad in strange garments, but he walked more like a jungle-cat than anything else. Yet his only color was a hint of the black of the northern woods, and that black cloud which was growing in size and clarity as it expanded. Its clinging and rustling made Natala wince in horror.

What lay behind that mist? Nanoc did not care. He was a Cimmerian, one of those gloomy Cimmerians who dwelt in the wastes of the north. And he thought long and hard about this grim land.

What lay behind that mist? Nanoc did not hesitate. With no warning he plunged into the mist, and suddenly felt the earth – cold, slimy, far below him—rot, turning from ice. That was all.

Immemorial he had gazed upon the grim relics of that mist, haunted and horrific, of which Natala had seen and admired for herself, almost before she knew what had disturbed him in the first place. But this mist had been there for centuries; no man who had looked upon it for three thousand years would have realized that Natala suffered from anything but a vague and horrible nervousness.

The Cimmerian let himself down on the soft leather sward in the blackness, and Natala, staring fearfully over the misted sward, saw the Cimmerian rise and fall at the same instant. They had come into a high building, empty, its ceiling cracked with mud and stone shards. It was dark, yet it was high-walled and gloomy. The building was a fort, in the sense suggested by the dim Stygian legend. In higher regard it was a marvel; not only were the walls pierced with great stones, but the sheer stone back of the walls was covered with prehistoric trees.

Natala believed that this man had come from the far north, and not be fooled by tales of unnamed Hyborians who wandered up from the far South in the past.

It was dark, but not impossible that this giant mist had blown itself up out of the sky in a giant puffball of blackness. What else could make such a bludgeon, she dared not conjecture. What other shapes nor attributes might be expected of that frosty cloud—yet she knew that it hung in conclave above her. For all its monstrous features Natala felt as if she were looking on the ultimate in peril of her life.

There was no turning back now. Rising cautiously she gripped the hem of her gown and forced down her streaming hair. The mist was almost touching her bare thigh. Suddenly she screamed, clutched blindly and caught at something clinging in the air. With a convulsive shudder she recoiled, but only to stiffen, clutching at the thing in the air as if it were an animal.

She was caught in a trap as quick as the leap of a cobra, when all hell and destruction burst at the sight of this accursed thing on the other side of the mist. Instantly there followed a mad rush of impulse.

Nanoc sprang from the mist, blood starting from his thick throat. The Cimmerian’s only weapon was a pair of great curved swords in his right hand, and his only armor was a pair of bright crimson silk breeks.

“How, Nanoc?” Natala gasped.

“Did you see it, Natala?” He shook his head. “It came floating toward the south—nearly at our feet.”

“It came pouring toward us,” she answered absently. “It was coming from the south—long, broad, and slim. As it approached us we saw its outlines fading. Soon it was like a faint glow in the mist. Then it engulfed us, and we froze in a horror-like stare. It was like encountering in a dream the nightmare of a dead world. We screamed and writhed like ghosts in the darkness, but it was only the girl who escaped. We followed her, blind, panting, and we came to a trap. We caught her, but we went to our doom. They dragged us to the edge of the marsh, but we got away. That’s where they chained the bodies of the dead men. They don’t keep anybody from anything. We broke through the black line, and the warriors came after us like phantoms. When they went after us we were like broke-trees; they could not tear us loose. We sweated and died among them. They took our brains, cut us down like rats, and made us queen of the black kingdom. Oh Crom, I see how quickly the gods allow a devil to loose on us!”

She shivered; a revulsion shook her as she stared at the grim, naked shapes that squatted in the dimness before her. She imagined their spears should smite on her, her flesh crawling. She fought against a rising tide of unreasoning passion, frantic with shame and revulsion. She fought against a rising tide of unreasoning panic, a shame more abysmal than the fear of death that assailed her. And she fought against a monstrous cynicism that mocked and malignified her weak-girl spirit. She fought against a monstrous cynicism that stifled her fiercely and inexorably. She was a daughter of the Orient; white-skinned, black-bearded barbarians are considered by many nations to be their enemy.

“I was born in a naked land. I have never hated the Orient. I have hated the Stygian and the Shemitish. I have hated the priests of Asura. I have even hated the priests of Tarim, for they are blood-mad demons of darkness and the gloom of the abyss. I have hated the Shemites because they control the hearts of the people; they control the hearts of the slaves and the warriors. I have hated them especially because of their black arts, which they claim is the secret power behind the ancients.” Nanoc said.

“I love the people. The desert is full of blood-mad Shemites. The Turanians have the strongest army in the world, and the most ferocious clan on the planet. The Turanians are savages as far back as Shushan. The black plague of the ancient Nordheimer’s horror wiped out that other horde, and now only the Turanians, untouched by the Lemurians, are left to waken in the teeth of the fury. No man has touched or sounded the horn of the plague, not even the black wizard himself, who has made a living from the black plague.” He continued. “So I have hated and feared the priests of Tarim so, that night I crept to their camp, and talked with their chief, Yasmela, who is a man from Mount Zabylon. He is a man from whom I have felt the pull of the blackest nightmares ever born. I have hated and reviled him so fiercely that I thought I could crush him with my own hands, but he would not leave me to grope in the mud until I had his filthy hide.”

The steely eyes of the Cimmerian shone through the mist. “I found his lair in the ruins of a hill where, days ago, I found myself entranced by a ghoul while crawling through the reeds. I crawled out into the night and saw his great figure looming against the stars; then I saw him, a great, vulture-like figure, with the eyes of a panther, the lips of a snake, the whole length of the back of his mighty neck drawn back up between his huge shoulders.”

“I wonder if that’s what the governor thinks,” growled Nanoc.

“You’re blunt in your speech,” said the girl.

Nanoc made no reply, and strode toward the bronze door. As he clambered into the great throne room, the torchlight glinted on his thick black mane. He did not glance about him. The chamber was now empty of human life, but there was a glint of steel in his bronze eyes. Nanoc’s veins stood out like blue cords on his temples.

A few moments later he was standing in the great throne room, tense with eagerness. He saw the men clustered thickly about the polished, carven table. Three of the chiefs had gone into the other room, separated by a stone wall. The fourth, still in the great throne room, was leading the charge. His voice came from behind the throne-dais, panting slightly.

“They’ve trapped our king! They’ve cut our heads off! He’s alive and all, and they can hear. Tell me, how did you know my people were not already all cut off?”

“They tried to climb the walls last night,” answered Nanoc. “They came into the building and found our body, wrapped in the hangings. It was found on the fourth floor, but we couldn’t rush it up. They tried to hang the bodies of the people who’d been taken by the soldiers, but they were cut off from the rest of the city.”

“Five dead dogs!” cried Taurus, paling. “Five slain! They’ve left seven of my people still in the city to be slain! The soldiers carried their bodies to the mines beneath the city, but they were so shattered they couldn’t rebuild them. They tried to climb the walls, but they were cut off from the rest of the city, and couldn’t. They found a cleft in the wall, and tried to go about it, but they were cut off from the rest of the city, and found themselves cut off from the rest of the kingdom. Then they came to the ruins and saw the people inside, just as the people of Tarantia had done. They found themselves in that dungeon for a very long time, and stripped naked, and mutilated the bodies of many of the people you mentioned, but you said nothing to anyone, except yourself. I doubt if the Crawler, like all evil things spawned in darkness, was ever truly slain.”

“I saw nothing but yourself in that darkness,” muttered Nanoc.

“Oh, please tell me!” begged the girl, pressing something hard and shiny into his palm. “The barbarian isn’t as quick as he thinks! He can leap and strike like a flash of light, and still I can’t say that he can’t tear men limb from limb. But I saw some of the bones of the rottenness you saw on the outer side – that’s why the others were taken down. Could it be they that were able to do that much damage without dying of starvation?”

“That’s why the people of the city let me live so long,” said Nanoc. “A lot of my people died naturally. There was the pestilence of the black plague; there was the unrestrained ambition of the Hyborians; there was the lust of the Bossonians; there was the burning ambition of the yellow-skinned Tlazitlans; and there finally were the revolts that shook the world against the immutable laws of nature. But the reality was more grisly than any death. That’s why I came into the pits. So why couldn’t the gods change their minds?”

Natala shivered.

Consider telling a friend about the StoryHack podcast. And nominating ROBOT E Howard for all the awards next year.

A few weeks ago, those of you who follow @StoryHackMag on twitter have seen a few posts about me using an AI text-generation tool to generate some fiction based on the works of Robert E Howard. Sometimes the AI spits out bizarre nonsense, but sometimes it creates some amusing stuff, like the following poem-

— KATHULOS OF EGYPT
“And whither the stars turn,
Stumbling drunkenly on shores,
As the sea draws near,
Death lies dead.”
—Swinburne

Because I’ve used a heap of now public domain works by REH to train the AI, I’ve nicknamed my copy “ROBOT E Howard.”

Samples of ROBOT E Howard’s writing

I have actually trained 4 “voices” for Robot E Howard.

“Conan,” using all of the public domain Conan stories.“Steve,” using all of the public domain boxing stories about Sailor Steve Costigan.“Weird,” using a bunch of the public domain horror and weird stories of various chracters, including Conrad and Kirowan, Steve Harrison, etc.“Award Bait,” which is not based on writings from Robert E. Howard at all, but instead the 10 most recent Hugo award-winning short stories whose text is publicly available.

If you look at snippets of what is generated, they are quite often highly suggestive of a larger story, unfortunatley, Robot E Howard is not much of a plotter, and the more text you generate, the more wildly it wanders.

Conan

… “As turbulent as a realm as that,” broke in Conan.

“No,” broke in Natohk. “Civilized men can and will rise only when there is unrest.”

“And they will rise. Oh, Conan, we are in the grip of some dire terror!” The king’s iron lips quivered with an ague. “Yet we are not afraid! What has become of you? Have you found yourself in the grip of some sort of nightmare? What peril have you encountered? What peril have you encountered, oh king, of all thieves and scourghers, who could have laid the earth in your teeth before your horse had a chance to pluck and rip you from the planet at last?” …

Weird / Horror

Snippet #1 This is by far the darkest sentiment bit that was generated in my trials.

“As I thought, no harm could be written on this paper,” she muttered. “I suppose the executors of the estate will kick in—or rather, what will be the living descendants of the dead men be—in a most grisly fashion—and there will be no death to them, to my family.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at the man; her dark eyes seemed to glimmer through the dust.

“You will do as I asked?” he said awkwardly, turning pale.

“As I said, I will kick this dead man’s head off.” And she screamed, clung to him, sobbing hysterically. “It’s not me. I want your forgiveness, sob,” she faltered.

“I want you to do as I asked, sobbing. I’ll live, or I’ll kill you myself!”

“I’ll kick this dead man’s head off!”

The head was gone and the dark, claw-like hand that held it up was gone.

Snippet #2 – This one had a strong body-swap-time-travel thing going on.

NOW I look out over the ancient dreaming downs and the hills and deep forests beyond and I ponder. Somehow, that blow from that ancient accursed mallet knocked me back into another age and another life. While I was Aryara I had no cognizance of any other life. It was no dream; it was a stray bit of reality wherein I, Aryara, once lived and died, and back into which I was snatched across the voids of time and space by a chance blow. Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally—oh, very rarely!—the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.

I am John O’Donnel and I was Aryara. Aryara, who dreamed dreams of war-glory and hunt-glory and feast-glory and who died on a red heap of his victims in some lost age. But in what age and where?

The last I can answer for you. Mountains and rivers change their contours; the landscapes alter; but the downs least of all. I look out upon them now and I remember them, not only with John O’Donnel’s eyes, but with the eyes of Aryara. They are but little changed. Only the great forest has shrunk and dwindled and in many, many places vanished utterly. But here on these very downs Aryara lived and fought and loved and in yonder forest he died. Kirowan was wrong. The little, fierce, dark Picts were not the first men in the Isles. There were beings before them—aye, the Children of the Night. Legends—why, the Children were not unknown to us when we came into what is now the isle of Britain. We had encountered them before, ages before. Already we had our myths of them. But we found them in Britain. Nor had the Picts totally exterminated them.

Nor had the Picts, as so many believe, preceded us by many centuries. We drove them before us as we came, in that long drift from the East. I, Aryara, knew old men who had marched on that century-long trek; who had been borne in the arms of yellow- haired women over countless miles of forest and plain, and who as youths had walked in the vanguard of the invaders.

As to the age—or the nature—of the thing—I cannot say. But I, Aryara, was surely an Aryan and my people were Aryans. The Celts were before us and the Persians came later. But they were Aryans like us, light-eyed and tall and blond. We fought them, for the reason that the various drifts of Aryans have always fought each other, just as the Achaeans fought the Dorians, just as the Aryan people fought the Dorians, just as the Celts and Germans cut each other’s throats; aye, just as the Hellenes and the Persians, who were once one people and of the same drift, split in two different ways on the long trek and centuries later met and flooded Greece and Asia with blood.

Now understand, all this I know as I was Aryara, was wronged by the many centuries of my race, and now I am, Aryara, and I am John O’Donnel. The reason for my jest with the Picts and the Celts was simple; they did not want my help; they knew more about me than I cared to learn. They had seen and identified me—knew me instantly that I was O’Donnel.

Steve Costigan

Oddly enough, in the multiple snippets I generated, there wasn’t really much fighting going on.

“You may be tempted to do his bidding,” she said. “But I’ll tell you, so you won’t get no false ideas. I ain’t puttin’ my map on any of his works. I’ll tell you frankly that when I got the map from John Bain, I didn’t expect him to let it go without my knowing it was a secret.”

“But it’s a lot of work,” I said, and she scowled slightly. “I dunno what you could do if you didn’t know already. What’s more, it means you’re outa luck.”

“I’ll tell you,” she said, “because I think it might be a good idea to ask her what you’re thinkin’ about.”

“Is she afraid you’ll squeal?” I asked mildly.

She looked kind of frightened.

“Well,” I said, “all I know is that she keeps a date with Mushy Hansen, see? And he likes her.”

Award Bait

Somehow, a large chunk of what was generated with the “Award Bait” settings was in the second person. I guess sometime recently there was a story written that way. I don’t know, I didn’t read them as I imported. The following is from the brilliant story titled, “To your brain:”

White berry sauce and a pinch of sesame oil fill your mouth. When you get the bartender’s attention, you grin and take notice.

The three of you are stood up in a row, face to face.

“Cheer up,” DarAnne says. “Cheer up, ladies.”

“You better.”

You feel a little panicked, but recognize that bartender is waiting for you. A skinny black guy stands out at the Hey U.S.A. bar. It’s funny. Under this light, in this crowd, thousands of white ladies could see themselves on a winter morning.

The bartender calls last call, and you realize the bartender is waiting. You drink your beer alone, wait a reasonable amount of time, and leave.

White puffs of smoke signals flicker up, up and away beyond your far shoulder.

“So what do you really think?”

“I think I really need this job.”

In Conclusion

It’s a pretty fun toy, even if it is not exactly like finding a lost Solomon Kane manuscript. Tomorrow on the podcast, you’ll get to hear a full-length story generated by ROBOT E Howard. About 3,000 words, anyway. And then I will label this experiment a huge success and be ready to move on.

I’ve decided to run a little test to see how viable it is to get narrators for the podcast, so if you are interested in narrating a story or two, now is your chance.

If you are not familiar with the StoryHack podcast, it is a podcast wherein I have been reading the same types of stories that go in the magazine, but from the pulp era, and are in the public domain. Check out the podcast page.

For this test, I’ll pay $20 / story recorded, paid via paypal or venmo. I’m looking for 4 or 5 stories for this test. I have some stories picked out, but I can track down others of narrator really want to do something specific. The story recording will be used as an episode for the StoryHack podcast, freely available on the internet. Stories are usually in the 5k-10k word range.

I’m not looking for absolute perfection in the recording or anything. Just listen to an episode or two to hear the quality I’m comfortable with. If you want to do character voices, that’s great, but you don’t have to if you don’t want.

Want to narrate, but have no idea how to do it? I’ll work up a document sometime soon that will walk you through the steps.

Want to narrate, but have no recording equipment? I may have a mic or two I’d be willing to trade for recordings in lieu of cash payment.

If the terms sounds good, and you want to give it a go, this is how things will work:

Email me (address is bryce at this website) to say “I’m in”. In your email, let me know: your name, what, if any, audio recording you have done before, if you have any genre preference, or even any specific author or story you really want to record (I will double check the public domain-ness thereof), a link to your website if you have one, and anything else you think I should know.I’ll respond to you. I don’t know how much interest there will be, but if I don’t pick you, it’ll be because I’m only doing a fairly small test. If selected, I’ll look at your preferences, and send you a story as a pdf.You record the story and send me the recording as a .wav (or maybe as a very high quality mp3, like 320 kbps). Dropbox or Google drive is probably better than an email attachment for this.I’ll send you the $20, and then let you know when the episode is scheduled to drop.You rejoice and tell your friends about the podcast.

If this works, I may do more. It depends on if the podcast gets a bunch more listeners and any patrons.